Transcript
Protecting Voters And Living On The Road (Hour 2)
Daybreak w/ Brian and Jamie · Tue Jun 9, 2026
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Wisconsin Wakes Up Here.
Back to Daybreak with Brian and Jamie.
We are persevering here this morning.
Now, in a moment, we're going to get to all the stuff you need to know.
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Good gravy WHEL wheel WHEL is the word that you need to text us right now That is the correct and accurate word that will get you qualified for all of the cash and prizes wheel is your word this hour
W-H-E-E-L.
You know what this means?
It means we've been doing a lot of words for a very long
one
Why not
you ready?
All right.
So I don't know if you've heard about this, but this is pretty cool.
There's a new bronze statue sculpture honoring Ho-Chunk healer Betsy Thunder that's been installed in Riverside Park in La Crosse.
Now, Thunder was known in the late 1800s for treating both Ho-Chunk residents and white settlers in the region.
This sculpture replaces the former Hiawatha statue, which was removed in 2020 after criticism that it in actual
represented Native Americans and reinforced stereotypes.
Ho-Chunk leaders say the new statue provides a more accurate representation of the tribe's history and presence in the lacrosse area.
This sculpture was created by Deborah Fabian using historical photographs and historically accurate clothing and details.
The new Ho-Chunk garden will feature native plants used for traditional medicine and is also intended to highlight themes of healing community and cultural understanding.
Organizers say this project is about more
than honoring one individual, they hope that it also recognizes the continuing presence and contributions of the Ho-Chunk people in Western Wisconsin.
This garden is scheduled to be officially dedicated on July 30th.
And when I was looking at this story yesterday, I was looking at some of the photos, not only of the statue, but of the garden itself.
Beautiful, beautiful place.
So this is gonna be very exciting.
I'm actually, I love La Crosse.
La Crosse is one of my favorite areas to visit.
If you've never taken a drive down the inner
state, there's this moment where when you come through one of the curves, it's all of the bluffs, all of the trees, and it is one of the most picturesque places ever.
So I love being able to visit La Crosse.
So put that on your list if you're going to be in the area.
More headlines and stuff you need to know.
Milwaukee officials are going to hold a public hearing on June 24th to discuss the possibility of converting wheat energies from an investor owned utility to a publicly owned
utility.
The hearing will include presentations on Wisconsin law governing utilities, information about public power systems, and an opportunity for public comment.
Supporters say that public ownership could give local residents and elected officials more control over energy decisions and rates.
WeEnergies says that its current model provides reliable service, competitive rates, and resources that would be difficult for a city-run utility to match.
No decision is going to be made at this hearing.
It's expected
to start a broader discussion, though, about whether public ownership is a viable option for Milwaukee.
And then without further ado, in stuff you need to know, Amtrak is expected to release a final plan this month for expanding Hiawatha passenger rail service from Milwaukee to Madison with stops in Pihuahqui and Watertown.
This proposal would extend two existing daily Hiawatha round trips that currently run between Chicago and Milwaukee.
Amtrak estimates the extension could attract about
260,000 additional riders each year and views it as one of the most promising passenger rail expansions in the country.
If funding and environmental approvals move forward, service could begin as early as 2029.
This project is expected to cost between $215 million and $275 million, with federal grants potentially covering up to 80% of those construction costs.
Supporters say that the line would improve travel options between
Milwaukee and Chicago while creating jobs and generating an estimated $46 million in annual economic impact.
Proposed station locations include Pewaukee, Watertown, and also a temporary station in downtown Madison.
The expansion would serve as the first step in a broader vision of extending passenger rail service farther west into Wisconsin in the future.
I mean, if you can't get excited about this, I don't know what you could get excited about because this opens up so many options to
If you want to come into the state just for a day, if you-
And the one thing you notice when you go to other countries is how accessible everything is by public transportation, which is why everybody gets to travel to different neighboring countries because you just hop on a train and get there within a few hours.
I wish I could hop on a train tomorrow morning and get to Madison.
on vaccines become one of the most important factors in fighting a new partner.
There is a growing number of niche dating apps that are connecting people based on their vaccination status and views on public health.
Organizers say it's about shared values and personal freedoms.
Now, an anti-vaccination dating app called Unjected, that's the name, which
you have to love.
actually
Organizers describe this movement as being focused on personal choice, bodily autonomy, and medical freedom rather than just opposition to vaccines.
Well, nobody wants to be around you if you're not taking, if you're not vaccinated because we don't want to catch something from you.
No, this is true.
I mean, because
If you've dated or you're young enough to remember dating, it feels like it was an eternity ago, you know that there's always that one, you have to have commonalities with people.
That's just it.
We've all been on really good dates.
We've all been on really bad dates.
And usually the worst dates were the ones where you had absolutely nothing in common with that person.
So I feel like this is just that one point where you're like, ooh, we'll latch on to this person because they have this one thing in common with us, right?
And I don't know.
It just feels weird though.
It feels like I would have to, I saw myself to like leave the room.
So that's how I
but for this particular dating app.
Unjected.
Attendees have traveled long distances for the event, some flying from other states, others drive hundreds of miles to meet people who share these views.
Unjected launched in 2021 and it markets itself as a dating platform specifically for people who choose not to be vaccinated.
There are several other niche dating platforms that have emerged in recent years targeting unvaccinated individuals and those skeptical of the vaccine requirements.
A lot of experts say that political beliefs
public health views and personal values have become increasingly important factors in modern dating decisions.
And this particular app was briefly removed from major app stores in 2021 over concerns related to COVID-19 misinformation.
Later though, it returned to Apple and Google platforms.
So now it's okay.
You know, then it wasn't, but now it's fine that it spreads misinformation about vaccines.
It's fine.
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Your dad's birthday today too?
It's also my dad's birthday, yeah.
to
I'm going to a softball game without him.
I bought this I bought these tickets like
ago
Oh, what kind of such a horrific story.
It was.
But I'm also really wondering what demands the guy could have.
He has demands.
And that's nothing against her.
No, I love her.
If I'm super rich, famous and attractive and could sing like that, I'd play the field a lot too.
The point, the fact of the matter is if I'm Ethan Slater, buddy.
We all looked at this couple and I don't mean to say this to sound shallow, but you didn't, it just didn't make sense.
You didn't have a chance in hell.
and saying with this part, nobody gave it more than six months.
They lasted longer than everybody expected.
Good for them.
I think this was the conclusion everybody did expect.
literally at
Cool.
How
the first
That's we are 128 and a half million domestically and 571 and a half million internationally.
The first Mario Brothers movie also.
hit a billion dollars.
So Universal is doing very well for themselves.
That's why, per se, I'm getting the wrap up signal.
You are getting there.
up.
Want to join in on the conversation?
Call or text 855-75-CIVIC.
Now back to Brian and Jamie.
am
And then we were talking, I am super allergic to the bites that mosquitoes leave, even if they land on me.
All of a sudden I have this half dollar sized welt and then it swells way up and then it gets hot to the touch.
It's there for forever.
I love to be outside.
I love to hike.
I am like the deep queen.
Like I am head to toe and I might as well use it as an aerosol just around me because it just makes me happy.
But yeah.
If you have those issues in the summer, we can relate.
We can totally be friends and we'll keep the bugs away from everybody else at the campfire.
That's
to go.
Should get you one of those chairs that's got like the screen around
That
Like the bubble boy.
All right, so it is the Accelerate your summer text to win multi-state contest.
Your chance to win $100 and a Wisconsin Dells prize package is part of the daily prizes.
And of course, every time you enter into this contest, you are put into our grand prize drawing for $250 in gas and another $250 in groceries.
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The word this
Wheel is the word of the hour.
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Remember, you have until eight o'clock, so just about 23 minutes if I can do the math on the fly, because not my strong suit, especially early in the morning.
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qualify today and then of course tomorrow and Thursday and Friday as well before we wrap up and give away those grand prizes.
All right, with that being said, we know that in this country, elections keep getting harder and harder and the rules keep changing all the time.
And once again, the election rules are at the center of a national debate.
It turns out that the Trump administration is pushing new measures involving voter rolls and absentee ballots while voting right groups are challenging those
court, and then of course there's a little bit of movement on the election front in Wisconsin too, which we'll get to in just a moment.
But the Trump administration says states will be able to access federal citizenship data by the end of June to help identify potential non-citizens on voter rolls.
We are back to this discussion.
Here we go.
I mean, the discussion never left, right?
That's been the point of basically taking on the election process since the very beginning.
And let me be clear, I know I've pointed this out on the show before, I'm gonna do it again.
Multiple studies have found that voter fraud is extremely rare.
There was an analysis done just a year or two ago that says that the voter fraud ranges from anywhere from .003% to .0025%.
So less than a 1% chance of voter fraud.
In fact, the research concluded that somebody in the United States is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud at the polls.
that is the facts of
In fact, I believe that it was analyzed.
It was taken through the courts in numerous different states, including here at Wisconsin, and there was no rigging of the election whatsoever.
It has gone through the process of being
basically being shown that it was a fair outcome to the election.
But here we are, we continue to litigate it six years later.
Now, this effort is part of a March executive order that was aimed at tightening election procedures ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Homeland Security actually plans to give election officials access to citizenship information from federal databases, including records maintained by Immigration, Social Security and State Department
Well, it turns out in this country, we already have laws that prohibit anybody who is a non-citizen from actually casting a vote.
But, you know, if this is what Homeland Security is spending their time on, sure, we'll let them continue to do that.
The administration also says that the goal is to prevent non-citizen voting, which studies and election officials generally, as we just pointed out.
find to be very, very rare.
The order also calls for increased monitoring of mail ballots.
And this is, this is where I think most of us should take pause because federal officials say they want to track absentee ballot data for signs of possible fraud or misuse.
Now there's been voting rights groups, including the League of Women Voters and the NAACP.
We've talked about some of these lawsuits here on the show that have filed these suits in court, arguing that this executive order
seeds presidential authority and could actually interfere with state-run elections.
There are critics out there who say that this particular plan could create confusion for voters and raise concerns about privacy, voter access, and the accuracy of federal citizenship databases.
There's also people who support what this administration is doing, say that these changes could improve election security and help states maintain accurate voter registration polls.
We talked earlier last week about the US Postal Service, how they've proposed all of these new requirements that would require states to provide voter information before
or mailing the ballots they want to get local police involved.
I mean.
Really, at the end of the day, this is exactly what they've always wanted.
It's to so mistrust.
It's to keep people from actually casting a vote and making it much harder to
I was going to say, Sonny, I don't even know if it's so much the mistrust that's going to get a lot of people.
I think it's just going to become too much of a hassle.
You know, especially when we look at people Parker's age, the Gen Zers, when you're first starting to get into voting and you see all of this news come out and.
you know everything's changing and the processes are processes are different and all this stuff if I'm young and I was at one point
coming straight out of college, looking at that and be like, hey, are you voting?
And be like, no, I don't want to deal with all that.
Which I think is interesting, though, and an interesting way to look at it, because in this past presidential election, when you look at how young people, Parker's age, voted, young females tended to skew more towards Kamala Harris, but it was the young males who actually took a hard swing.
towards President Trump and cast their vote for President Trump.
So I think that it's fascinating that many times this administration does things that actually spite their own agenda.
Or that's
I'm sure there's some underlying reason.
Obviously the citizenship is part of that underlying reason.
Immigration is part of that.
They believe, telling the world that non-citizens are voting, which is not happening.
But at the end of the day, it is essentially things that spite
their own agenda, which I always find ironic that you would try to dissuade people from voting when it's also Republicans who are an older demographic who tend to use mail-in voting, when it's rural voters who also
use
Obviously, they're trying to implement these federal changes, which could affect our elections nationwide.
And obviously, keeping an eye on the 2026 midterms as we quickly approach those.
But here in Wisconsin, there are two separate election stories that are also putting the spotlight on voter confidence and how our elections are administered on a local level.
Now, these are both fascinating to me because we know that Milwaukee has come under...
the err of this particular president with the central count, how it operates in the state of Wisconsin.
And the city has now hired two outside legal groups to help respond to all of those election related issues as the FBI investigates aspects again of the 2020 election.
Again, litigated, found to be a completely fair election that was done within...
the rights of the state.
Yes.
We have to be.
I mean, there is no dollar amount attached to this, but the fact that the city of Milwaukee now has these two legal groups who are helping rehash and relitigate something that happened six years ago.
I mean, this is all going to be at taxpayer expense just so this administration can feel good.
about the fact that the president lost the 2020 election because he lost the 2020 election.
He lost.
It's interesting because there's some polls that have come out within recent weeks and months that talk about how Republicans still, there's several Republican voters who still have distressed of the 2020 election, but they are also ready for this administration to move on.
So I don't know what this really gains them by continuing to question the results of something that happened almost a decade ago now.
Mark from Prairie to Sack chiming in saying that Wisconsin's very own Ron Johnson with part
Words are hard this morning.
You're welcome.
You know- The word is wheel.
Mark says, in my opinion, Ron Johnson knew the insurrection was coming to delay certification, enabling them to replace the real electoral votes.
Thank you for the text this morning.
But federal agents have actually, in Milwaukee, interviewed several current and former Milwaukee election officials, staff members, and at least two Milwaukee police officers at this point.
Much of the questioning reportedly centers on Milwaukee's central vote counting operation on election night in 2020.
have asked about an incident involving a flash drive that was mistakenly left in a voting machine, but was later recovered and turned over to authorities.
City officials say that outside legal assistance will be provided at no cost to the taxpayers.
So that does
in fact answer
Now there have been multiple recounts, court rulings, audits and reviews that confirm in Milwaukee that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin.
And I know we're running out of time so quickly.
in Madison, a former Madison deputy clerk, who took responsibility for 23 absentee ballots that arrived late on election night, has been reassigned now to non-election duties.
City officials have emphasized that the affected voters followed the rules and that the problems were caused by election administration errors, not the voters, so that person will not be touching the ballots again.
I guess that's some good news.
Gotta take accountability even on the local level.
The question this morning, could you ditch your house and live in an RV full time?
Frank, more Wisconsin residents are doing that.
We're gonna explain the laws, the costs, and the realities of RV living next on Daybreak.
It's 748 on the Civic Media
Network.
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All right, Frank, we've actually talked about this.
So I think that this is interesting.
Have you ever, what is happening out there?
Was there a truck?
Oh, there was
He apparently needed to get through.
We actually talked about doing this at one point.
Have you ever wondered if you could sell your house, buy an RV and just hit the road full time?
More Wisconsin residents are actually starting to do that.
And the number of people living in RVs has more than doubled in recent years.
But of course, before you trade in the front door for a camper door, there's a few things that you need to know about how this actually works.
in the state of Wisconsin.
And I guess the big question and the question that we had to ask ourselves, is it as affordable as it actually sounds?
Turns out that by the time you, if you have to buy a huge truck to pull a rig, right?
And you have to buy the rig.
No.
It turns out that it is actually not cheaper if you're going to do it that way, especially if you're figuring in like gas and then stops along the way and all of that.
Now we had actually contemplated doing this when our kids were really, really little.
because of the storm chasing, right?
We wanted to be able to be in a central location and then be able to go out and actually help in the cleanup process and volunteer in some of those areas that get hit really hard by tornadoes.
Then by the time we added it all up, figured it all out, it was not going to be cheap whatsoever, at least not the way that we intended on doing it.
But a lot of people in Wisconsin are choosing full-time RV.
and the number of people living in RVs or vehicles similar to that has grown from about 1,100 back in 2019 to nearly 2,700 just a couple of years ago.
If you're doing the math this morning, that's 137% increase.
I did not do that on my own, I had to calculate it.
Now, Wisconsin does not have a statewide ban on full-time RV living.
Local governments actually set their own rules on this.
Milwaukee and Madison generally do not allow people to live full-time in RVs on residential property with only limited exceptions for temporary parking.
If you're outside some of the major cities or the urban areas, their rules are going to vary by community if this is something you want to do.
In fact, a lot of full-time RV residents stay in
capgrounds, RV parks, or a lot of other locations where long-term stays are permitted.
In fact, if you get into some of the national park areas, campers can stay up to 14 days without fees or permits if they follow federal camping rules.
And a lot of RV living can eliminate rent, the mortgage payments.
It still comes with the cost though, as we quickly found out, including the purchase price, all of the financing, the insurance, the maintenance, the fuel, the capground fees.
Yeah.
Oh, fuel.
And if you're keeping score, new RVs can range anywhere from about $15,000 to about $380,000, depending on the size and all the features.
Year-round RV sites in Wisconsin are about $190 per month, which is a lot of
is much less expensive than, you know, an apartment, which an average price for one bedroom is about 1,100, depending on where you're at in the month.
So, I mean, there are benefits to the whole thing, I guess, if you really want to go that route.
We actually have friends who have a permanent spot and they actually leave their house in the summertime and then stay at their RV all summer long, and that's where they live and that's where their home base is in the summertime.
So that's kind
I think so.
I think like the storm chasing thing, yes, that is one of those special categories where it kind of makes sense.
But humans for the most part don't like change.
So a constant change of scenery, I think most people wouldn't actually be comfortable with.
I think it's very much a idealistic.
Thing that you may be daydreaming about like man, what if I could just
we
moved on because we really when we get into communities We really love to see what it's like to be part of that community not visit that community And then you think about things like you know, especially in certain parts of the country year-round farmers market
and all of those really fun things.
But again, by the time you do all the financing for campers and RVs, it's just not as cheap as everybody thinks.
Plus it takes a very special person because well they're tight spaces.
Nobody wants to be claustrophobic at home.
Coming up, we are going to talk about political standards.
Turns out that they don't really carry the same weight that they once did.
When you vote, what's more important?
A candidate's characters or their policy?
We'll talk about that next.
This is Dave Ray.
We're listening to Pacific Media Network.
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