
It's time to get organized with Dr. Craig in Citizen Action.
Working for democracy and taking on economic, racial, and environmental issues across Wisconsin and around the United States, here's Earl Inger with Dr. Robert Craig.
I'm doing very well, personally, under the circumstances.
I will not speak to the broader situation
Well, you know, Dr. Craig, it's more than nauseating.
Kristi Noem says she has plans to eliminate FEMA.
It's just one after another, after another, after another.
They said they weren't gonna do anything to social security.
They're dismantling the apparatus for social security.
All of these things, the Americans with Disability Act, Dr. Craig, how low can they stoop?
They're now addressing, talking about Americans with disability.
So here's what I don't understand, Dr. Craig.
All of the people who voted for this madness.
And you don't have to admit to people you made a mistake.
But why don't you organize with the others of us who know the time and what must be done and push back.
on this before it's too late, Dr. Craig.
I don't care if you are a MAGA and you receive Social Security and you see what they're doing to Social Security, why wouldn't you now speak out?
Well, if you're MAGA Earl, you're in a right-wing media bubble and you're being convinced that
the alien awards are coming in to take your family, and you're worried about that.
And you think that it's fake news that they're, you know, by closing offices and laying off staff willy-nilly, making social security unworkable already, which does seem like a conspiracy to force privatization, though that was denied by, you know, we've provided, Wisconsin has the new head of social security with his confirmation here yesterday, he was the CEO of FISERV.
Yes.
So that's our product.
And it turns out he's been talking to Doge and probably lying about it.
Senator Chris Coons brought that up effectively in the confirmation hearing.
But he guarantees he won't touch social security.
But those guarantees are not worth the paper.
And he has no interest in privatization.
But those guarantees aren't worth the paper they're written on.
At this point, look, some of the people that voted for Trump, they're not full maga.
who thought he'd lower the price of A
groceries and were frustrated.
They're having buyer's remorse for sure, but they kind of go through stages of grief.
I don't think we can count on all of them to be at the front lines right away.
A couple weeks ago, during our phone banking on the Supreme Court and Department of Public Instruction race, talked to an Asian family in La Crosse area who had voted for Trump and now were appalled and were afraid that various members of their family would be deported.
Well, I think Trump made this pretty clear, but they were focused on, oh, well, you know, I really think the cost of living is too high.
Maybe Trump can do something about that.
But the popular resistances they have worked, there has been really good study of popular resistances that have overturned authoritarian regimes, okay?
We're not quite all the way to authoritarian, but we're going in that direction, right?
2.5% of the population has to be active.
Now, that's a lot of people.
2.5% of 300 million people is a lot of people.
But it does not mean we need the maggots on the front lines.
We know all the people already know this to get off the sidelines.
And we're seeing this, Errol.
We had, since National Wisconsin, we had town halls on the Medicaid cuts, which is also coming down the line.
Massive taking healthcare away to fund more tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires and for Elon Musk and company.
And massive turnouts in Warsaw Saturday night, uh, lacrosse Monday night, it'll clear Tuesday night and a lot of media coverage.
So people are getting energized.
This is, and this is developing.
And you're seeing a lot of protests around the country to do around the post office, for example, uh, they'll be increasing on social security, I think.
And what's beginning to happen slowly, Earl, is that this is hitting people where they live as they experience that's why.
Medicaid is such a huge issue because taking healthcare and long-term care away from people where they have nowhere else to go, where it's a fifth of all people get their healthcare through Medicaid, and it's the major funder of home care and nursing home care, long-term care in home care support.
That begins to tell as people can't
get their social security checks.
People have to drive 100 miles to prove their identity when they're disabled or they're a senior that is not mobile.
That is all going to begin to add up, Earl.
But it's kind of a race between their race to grab all the power and the public reacting and resisting and us developing a successful resistance movement.
But the next time we can stop them, Earl, outside of what the courts are trying to do, what are we up to?
Are we up to...
2025 injunctions against illegal unconstitutional activity by the Trump administration.
I mean, there's a battle between this federal district court judges and the Trump administration about lawlessness.
We don't know where that's going to end up, but we need to, but the place we can stop them first is with their budget and their budget.
The core of their budget is to cut healthcare.
and food support to fund tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.
That is their program, and that is incredibly unpopular, even among MAGA people.
Democratic Party of Racine County and Racine Resistance groups.
Saturday, March 29, 2025, 10.30 a.m.
Racine Monument Square.
Congresswoman Gwynne Moore will be there, Greta Neubauer, Assembly Leader and Representative, and Angelina Cruz, Wisconsin Assembly Representative.
So, you know, I mean, that's what it's going to take, right?
And so we've got to be willing to prioritize and join these types of unrest and send a message.
That's how it's worked in the past, Dr. Craig.
It can work now if enough Americans foment this pleasure with what's going on.
Isn't that all we have?
Yeah, and but we need to effectively block them put enough pressure on the Republicans in Congress They can't pass Trump's budget that creates a crisis.
He has no funding For what he's trying to do and has to negotiate with Democrats he would have to and so we have these Republican Congress people in hiding right their own constituents So the reason we were because we have membership bases in Eau Claire and lacrosse.
We were there because Derek Van Orden
The congressman in a swing district who's very maga himself is refusing to have any town halls and is in hiding and all the television coverage You have his you have his response, you know picture of him with a response saying how it's a lie that we're gonna Medicaid the framework for the budget forces it and this is all busting protesters all the TV
I don't know, man.
You know, I've never been a politician.
Excuse me, politician.
But I would say when you stand before the people who elected you and they tell you and you look them in the eye and say to them, I'm with Donald Trump in Elon Musk.
I mean, it takes a lot of kahunas, right?
I mean, you took for you to say that to the people who put you in office.
And, you know, I don't think Dr. Craig, there have been many who had the courage historically to say that or to do that and survive,
right?
Because it, yeah, gerrymandering has been part of it.
Too many safe districts, you know, the, you know, Glenn growthman isn't going to lose his seat.
But the house is supposed to be the people's house.
That is the house of representatives.
It was supposed to be the government most responsive to the people.
In the 19th century, two-thirds of members of Congress would lose their seats and you'd have turnover because of it, because the Congress had come out a step with the people.
There are too many barriers we need to fix to changing that, but it doesn't take many.
We can sweep out people like Brian Stile in the first congressional district.
That's a swing district, Earl.
I know that's where you're doing the resistance event on Saturday.
And as well as Derek Van Orden in the third congressional district, the others should be competitive because there'd be more accountability, right?
But there is less right now because incumbents have set it up so that they're guaranteed re-election and they're deep red or deep blue districts, too many of them
Dr. Craig, do you think people really...
understand right now the impact of social security and the fact that social security, the way it's structured with all those bodies that they cut out of it, that it can continue to function at the rate that it was functioning before to make sure people get their benefits on time.
There's no way possible it can't be impacted by the massive cuts.
And if you were talking about the guy that was that they had
Last night talked speaking last night.
The guy was asked some straightforward questions And you know and it kind of did the politics the stuff he danced around them And they kept asking them.
I do you understand are you going to make sure?
That the average citizen is able to get what the government has promised to them and here's a guy who's trying to get that position and
He's dancing around things.
At least wait till you get elected, Dr. Craig, before, I mean, or appointed before you start dancing around things.
It's
dawning on people that hearing was damaging.
Washington posted a very good investigative report on how badly social security.
administration has already been damaged and how long the wait times are and how people can't get their questions and can't get their benefits.
And Ron Wyden asked the current CEO of FISERV, as in the FISERV arena, who's going to be ahead of Social Security, about if you can't administer the program and a person doesn't get their benefit, is that a benefits cut?
He admitted it was.
So he's admitted that Doge is already cutting benefits from people illegally because that's only something Congress could decide to do.
with the
All right, 855-752-4842.
Dr. Robert Craig, Executive Director of Citizen Action, and you on the Earl Ingram Show.
Join us at 855-752-4842.
855-752-4842.
It's the one and only Dr. Craig, Executive Director of Citizen Action.
So Dr. Craig, you and Citizen Action and others have been toiling in the vineyards of this Supreme Court race.
Over $100 million is going to be spent.
You don't have any feelings or thoughts.
You're not a soothsayer.
You know, early voting, the thing that Republicans condemned, they remember, oh, they're voting early, oh, it's criminal, they're voting early.
And now Republicans are voting early.
Now all of a sudden Dr. Craig is not so simple or criminal anymore.
What are your thoughts, Dr. Craig?
I know you guys are leaving it all in the ring.
And with all of this, what are your thoughts about the outcome?
Yeah, and if you want to phone bank with us, phone banking over the weekend, Monday and Tuesday, and canvases in La Crosse, Eau Claire.
was on Milwaukee as well over the weekend.
So I go to our website CISN Action of Wisconsin or to our Facebook page.
But anyway, I think you're right, there's much higher early voting but it's partly because the Republicans have come back that they've forgotten that Donald Trump said that you should never early vote in 2020 and try to end early voting and they've forgotten that Scott Walker tried to make early voting nearly impossible.
We were the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit that overturned his restriction.
So remember, federal courts allowed us to have strong early voting in Wisconsin.
Scott Walker and the Republicans didn't want us to.
Just to remind folks a little bit of history.
As far as I can tell, it's a 50-50 race or all that is to say that Democrats know.
who Crawford is and they're going to vote for, and Republicans and MAGA know who Schimel is and they're going to vote for him before Elon Musk, right?
Elon Musk has become another figure that has made it clear what divide each cat eggs on the side of.
And then where are we on these mushy independents, right, that are cross-pressured and somehow see some sort of don't see a clear line here?
Right?
Well, on the one hand, I like Schimel.
On the other hand, I like to be Crawford where you're really looking at, you know, as night and day, a comparison as you can get.
Though you wouldn't know from the ads, because all the ads which are going to drive down away some voters, some of the calls I can have for about bringing people back in and say, I know the ads are terrible, but you still need to vote.
And here's why.
Because all they're about is who's going to be harder on child molesters and who let child molesters go.
And I'm not making this up.
I don't think this is hyperbole.
No, the ads are about this.
This is what they're about.
And it's crazy because
any judge who has 100% batting average, it's not real.
You have to look at a case and decide what the appropriate sentence is, and it's not your fault if a certain percentage of your cases end up coming into the crime.
And so the position seems to be, and it's terrible for a Democrat progressive candidate campaign to advise this is, maximum sentences always no matter what the circumstances, right?
Then you can't get in trouble because you gave everyone the max.
That's not being a good judge.
We don't have horrible judges.
Qualify Supreme Court if he did what the ad said.
So there's that going on.
But I really think that this is a much closer race than last time, Earl.
And look, Elon Musk is not just funding a ton of TV ads.
He's funding a massive paid canvas.
And that's a whole lot of...
door knocks and contacts.
That means our side doesn't have the massive paid canvas.
You need to volunteer with people, like our organization, CIS National Wisconsin, in order to talk to people because there's a group of people that cannot be reached and moved and persuaded unless you talk to them.
They've already seen these TV ads over and over and over again.
And by the way, did the same ad just swap out?
the names other than the abortion issues.
a hell of a lot of people.
What justices do, just to repeat this, that someone can call in from the other side and disagree, Supreme Court justices do not sit there thinking about
how long a verdict to give to heinous criminals.
That's not what their role is.
They are in a pellet court, the top of pellet court.
They look at whether or not the Constitution's been violated or any procedures have been violated.
At the lower court level, they mostly deal with bigger issues such as, does the State Department of Natural Resources have the authority to regulate PFAS, for example, which are poisoning our water?
given the statute, given the Constitution.
That's much more of what they do, or is Act 10 constitutional, or can you out as the abortion ban from 1849, still not a zombie law, but a law that should be in effect and is consistent with the Wisconsin Constitution?
That is what it's about.
It's not about rendering sentences for the most heinous of
42 is the number.
You know, it's Wednesday, so at nine o'clock, that always means the one and only Dr. Robert Craig, Executive Director of Citizen Action, and you guys will take your calls on the other side.
All right, welcome back to the early group show as always.
You can join us at 855-752-4842.
You can text us at that same number.
It's Wednesday at nine.
That means the one and only Dr. Robert Craig, Executive Director of Citizen Action.
Let's go to the phone lines and Mike from Kenosha.
Mike, you're up.
Thank you very much for the call.
Come on guys, thanks for taking my call as always.
I have a very simple question and that is,
Why is big money from outside Wisconsin even allowed to be thrown into the pot?
It just seems to me, it's kind of like a foreign investment in our national elections.
It seems to me we should have sovereignty and control over our own state run elections, Dr. Craig.
And I wanted to get your opinion on that very quick.
thank you
for the call.
Go ahead.
Couldn't agree more.
Look, they say, you know, people who study authoritarianism that democracy fails slowly before it fails quickly.
So we're in the fails quickly part, but there was a lot of slowly that came up over the years.
And one of those was.
the deregulation of campaign finance, the landmark for that though had been happening gradually since the 70s, was Citizens United, which declared that apparently it's that money of speech.
And therefore, Milan Musk has the free speech rights to spend whatever part of the $250 billion fortune he has built up to take over elections.
And that's an absurd proposition.
Apparently,
Speaking out against the Gaza war is not free speech.
We can throw you out of the country for that without any due process.
So in protest, there is no right to protest on college campuses.
We can just bring in security and arrest people exercising the most core fundamental constitutional value that this country was founded on.
And so that wasn't a authoritarian decision.
And so a lot needs to get done.
And I think that's one of the frustration.
There's a lot of frustration with the Democrats.
Their approval ratings are the lowest they've been, though.
Let's frankly say they're not a unified party.
So where AOC is on what they should be doing is very different than where Chuck Schumer is, right?
To talk about two ends of the Democratic spectrum.
We need to start offering a clear agenda that we're going to fix these things, right?
And the Democrats haven't done a good nut job of that because they've been unified behind that kind of bold agenda.
So if we're just saying, oh, we need to stop.
Donald Trump so we can return the way things were before that, people aren't satisfied with that.
This is an example.
And so the caller's right to point that out.
And I think that that has made it much easier to have this attempted authoritarian takeover.
What amounts to, I mean, Doge is essentially instrument of a coup.
This is as much of a coup as the insurrection in January 6th was, January 6th, 2021.
Well, I say the fact that people don't know what the Supreme Court does is just because they're ignorant.
And the Republicans are taking advantage of the ignorance of the people.
And unfortunately, those ads are going to work.
We are going to get Brad Schimmel.
We're going to lose our fair maps.
Women will lose abortion rights in the state of Wisconsin and.
It's all because these people know that we're all ignorant of what goes on in the Supreme Court.
You know, you know, Dr. Craig, the reason that a hundred million dollars is going to be spent on this campaign is because of what happened last year when Janet Proto say which.
Justice Janet Protosewicz won.
And we kind of got a little glimpse of what fair maps could look like.
And it took us back to a time before Scott Walker and his regime and Robin Valls and Scott Fitzgerald and all of those people were able to take total control over the state for over a decade.
And and so they were able to commit all that havoc and I was listening to a conservative talk show host this morning and he was saying we cannot allow the Democrats or for you know to win that seat because They're gonna Jerry rig the maps what man, what are you talking about man?
That's what you guys did But all of a sudden now there's something
wrong with that way of thinking.
They did it.
They were able to control what they have in their state.
And now they're saying you can't allow the Democrats to win that seat or or they're going to they're going to Jerry rig the maps the other way.
Now, Cindy is right that people just don't know they don't they don't get it.
Well, we're a 50-50 state, so we should have four Democratic Congress people by the numbers.
They're cherry-mandered the other way currently.
That's why it's six to two, and it could be five to three, but it really should be fairer maps would give you much closer to four to four, even a five to three Democratic, depending on where things are going.
Look, Cindy is going to make people, there are going to be people that are going to
be resigned to our fate, right?
And what the problem with that, and that's fine.
Each person has to make their own decisions, Cindy.
So I'm not trying to cast any aspersions on her, and thank you for sharing that so we can discuss it, how you're feeling.
That, of course, leads us to essentially lose ultimately unless we can believe that it is possible to win.
It's going to be different.
I mean, a peaceful civil resistance movement doesn't use the normal democratic procedures.
They've been taken over, right?
They've been all gone.
I don't think this race is lost.
I think Schimel could win, but I think it's just as likely that Crawford would win.
I think this is a lot closer to a 50-50 race like a traditional.
Wisconsin U. S. Senate in recent years or presidential race, but we'll see Cindy may be right.
And even then we still need to persevere and ultimately win and find them and come together.
Come get on the streets and not and take effective action.
It just may take longer than we would have liked.
But but by as far as the voters, she said the voters are ignorant, right?
And to ignorant
We can be polite and say it's lower information.
It is not a very overall high information electorate.
And there is some personal responsibility, social responsibility part there, but let's face it.
Our society has made it much harder to be educated because on one side you have complete disinformation, the right wing noise machine, and even the traditional media in its constant gyrations to try to prove its objective.
doesn't necessarily give you what you need to be a good citizen, even if you try.
And so we're gonna start with the information, but yes, we need more voters to be more informed, but we also need to make that information readily available because people are busy trying to pay the rent, keep food on the table, find childcare for their families, right?
Support their kids in their education process and be involved in their schools.
Be involved in their neighborhoods everything else, right?
So and the problem is we have an attention-based society where tensions set up premium That's why Trump wants our attention all the time.
It's why The various streaming channels want want to have a new thing that we all have to watch to grab our attention That is the big commodified thing in our country and it takes away from
democracy because we have people less in tune with public affairs.
Well, let's face it.
The information is very corrupted as to what they receive if they tried as well.
I've been around politics a long time and there's an adage that candidate quality matters.
Kelly was a remarkably unappealing candidate.
And Shimmel
Well, to them, an attorney general, Ray, you see, had worked in the Scott Walker frame.
He's the kind of candidate that can draw on their side and draw all of their donors.
So in many ways, on the non-candidate side, we call it the independent side.
That's not the actual campaign and what the sides do.
What we believe is that
uh as says in action doing this through volunteers not through big money that we can help a good candidate get over the top if they're close we can't create a candidate there are reasons we lose because the candidate doesn't do their job and i think kelly just was that they couldn't get him over the top it's like this horse just we can't pull it over through the river it's gonna die
Well, yeah, hopefully people will get out and vote in this election at the federal level.
Trump has already started taking over the federal election board and he is clearly stated purpose is to make it as difficult to vote as possible.
I didn't say
but he's trying to figure out how much more difficult.
IDs to have for voting things like that.
This election may well be one of the last real elections that we have if he has his way, because he's going to try to disenfranchise as many people as possible.
The only possible way the Maggots can possibly be successful in their endeavors to take over our government
is if there are no real elections.
I think I may have said this on this program before.
Back in the 1980s, when the Reagan's Republicans took over the government, people said, well, if these guys get 100% of their agenda, let them do it, because there will never be another Republican elected again.
And I'm going to say that if these guys continue this way and we have honest elections.
the only way that they'll get back in again is if we don't have honest directions, because the Magus will never get back in again.
That's where we're at.
I think Jack makes a great point.
It's sort of this sort of stage of authoritarianism.
It's kind of a race.
Can we stop them before they grab all the levels of power?
Right?
So in addition to.
going and illegally taking over the Federal Election Commission, which is supposed to have a bipartisan balance, equal number of Democrats and Republicans, but he illegally fired the Democrats, hoping the Supreme Court would give him new powers that presidents never had before.
He made an executive order yesterday that some people, and Jacobs on the West Coast Election Commission thinks is an attempt to influence the R.A.
pro-first election.
That requires you to prove citizenship in order to vote in order the words to show your papers to use the old that thing that was used to describe an Arizona law and How many of you by the way birth birth certificates don't work, which is very bizarre.
So you gotta have a passport or a real ID so Not everyone is ready to present that
And the idea here is that it would be immediately challenging court.
It is probably unconstitutional.
Federal powers are on federal races, so it probably can't be applied to Wisconsin right now, though.
And Jacobs thinks he's trying, that that's what the effort is to create mayhem.
But he's going to try to find every possible lever and mechanism to affect the 2026 election, because that might be the last real chance to create a Congress that will block his efforts to grab further power.
you
As always, you can join us at 855-752-4842.
Text us at the same number.
Dr. Robert Craig, Executive Director of Citizen Action is on board.
Let's go to Sue, a first-time caller from Eclare.
Good morning to you, Sue.
You say what?
Good morning.
I have a concern on the news Monday, and we haven't heard anything since.
that the postmaster general Lewis DeJoy has stepped down.
He was put in that office in 2020 by Donald Trump and the two of them said that they were going to dismantle the postal service.
Now, Mr. DeJoy quit, stepped down from his position to go to work for Elon Musk now.
So he's going to be working for Doge.
And that really concerns me because
I think, while we're talking right now, that they're talking about dismantling the postal service.
And that's what I wanted to
Yeah, that wasn't my enough attention to the joy.
It looks like, I mean, the joys that Trump guy was appointed by Trump is going to work for that side.
But apparently they didn't want him or he didn't want to be part of the dismantling.
They floated things like either closing it, their Postal Service, or putting it in the Department of Commerce, and postal workers, their union, and a lot of community allies have been holding very effective protests around Wisconsin and around the country.
And I think the Postal Service is extremely popular, and it's one of those issues where it really benefits rural people more than urban people.
It is going to be profitable to send a letter across Milwaukee or across Madison.
What is not profitable is to send a letter from New York to Montana, right?
Or to roll Wisconsin.
And it was revolutionary.
We created a universal public postal service because no private eddy would have an interest in giving a flat fee.
for the same postal stamp sends it anywhere in the country, to all areas of the country, regardless of profitability.
It's why we don't have universal broadband, because we left it to private industry.
If we had a postal service of broadband, we would have it everywhere, and rural communities would be much better off.
And here's the question.
There have been a lot of commentators wondering at what point rural voters start voting in their own interest.
rather than voting based on the red meat of MAGA, because quite frankly, their own representatives don't do much for them other than say, we're going after people you hate.
We're going after Milwaukee.
We're going after the immigrants.
We're going after trans kids.
You know, they're running ads right now.
Schimel is accusing Susan Crawford of wanting to put boys in girls' bathrooms.
This isn't going on.
This is not a major public problem.
This is just...
a made-up thing, mostly made-up, in order just to trigger people's unfamiliarity with a group, and therefore their bias, their prejudice.
And it's disgusting.
But unfortunately, modern conservatism is based on drumming up these emotions, no matter what the facts of the case.
I just wanted to say that the message is good.
It should be simple for the Democrats in Wisconsin.
This guy is now the house speaker is now talking about getting rid of federal judges.
OK, they're taking away the last guard rail.
And if you don't start telling people that that's got to be the message.
OK, we have a 43 year old attorney that was looking into Russian war crimes who's all of a sudden found dead in her home.
Okay.
I believe she died of natural causes as much as I believe Epstein hung himself in his jail cell.
Okay.
This is all going on and it's all being hushed.
And this story about this attorney made the news for about a day, the news cycle.
Everybody needs to wake up and the message is simple.
The Democrats need to start bringing a cannon to the night fight and stop screwing around and telling the morning people what could happen if these federal judges go away.
It's over.
Hey,
Brendan.
Thank
you.
It's my message for all Wisconsinites.
First off, Cindy, don't get apathetic.
That's what the commercials want you to do is get apathetic.
Here's my message.
every Wisconsinite out there, when you look at your ballot, you look at the name Brad Schimel, and it's BF.
I know Wisconsinites don't fall for BF, and we all know it bold forward, other where it is.
So I know Wisconsinites don't fall for that.
Wisconsinites are too smart.
They beat Scott Walker.
They beat last year's Supreme Court race.
And honestly, every time you see his name, you know, when Maya Andalos says, when they show you who they are, believe them, he's showing you right in his name.
Don't vote for the BS.
And that's why I have... Hey, Tom,
Right.
And I'm going to death for...
today, so it's 80 there, so I'll be back.
I'll be back for GOTV on New York on the
But, you know, it's about developing a resistance.
We can't stop the firing of federal judges from moving their powers and letting them