From the depths of a digital abyss, where truth drowns in a sea of clickbait and algorithms, a beacon ignites.
From the heart of Badgerland, from our studios on State Street in downtown Madison, Wisconsin, it's John and Gordy on 92.7 WMDX.
In the United States, Donald Trump, big win at the Supreme Court, we'll get to that.
We'll talk to Jim Santel about that, a decision yesterday, and we talked to Jim in the afternoon, and this decision came down after that, so we'll be able to dig deeper into it, allowing the president to do almost any damn thing he wants at this point.
He is the dictator,
he is the
king.
And the Supreme Court has given them all those powers.
What if they refused to do anything that he said?
I don't think they have.
I mean, when was the last time that they
said no, he
couldn't
do that.
Yeah, I don't think they have.
And this is their wet dream.
And you wouldn't imagine that the Supreme Court...
would go along with something like this just because there's a list of conservative things that they've wanted to do the last 50 years you wouldn't think that the Supreme Court these justices who only look at the law and how it's written would go along with a political agenda like this but boy have they wow good morning it's almost breathtaking okay
Okay.
Done?
Yeah.
Just want to welcome everybody to the show.
I thought you were going to join in and start yelling too.
You know, you go right off the, you know, right off the deep end immediately.
I know.
What is wrong with me, right?
It's too much sugar.
I got to warm.
Yeah, I got to, you know, get going here a little
bit.
I
apologize.
You've had too much coffee already.
Well, I had French toast this morning.
My famous
French toast,
by the
way.
You're not unfamiliar with my famous French toast, but what I do is I make normal French toast.
But as I am frying the first side, I sprinkle cinnamon on the top.
And then when I flip it over, the cinnamon becomes grilled,
fried.
Yeah, nice patina on the French toast.
And I had to slip it in.
And it tastes great, but I think I use actual maple syrup, and I think that stuff jazzes me up just a little bit.
But this isn't the first morning I've done this either.
So
who knows.
So what time do you wake up in the morning?
Do you make this early, early in the morning at 4 AM?
Oh no, it's frozen.
I make an entire loaf of French toast, and I freeze most of it.
The kids eat half of it, I freeze half of it, and I just pop it out, put it in the microwave, and...
It's done.
That works.
Yeah.
I gotta say this.
This is unbelievable.
You know, yesterday, we talked to Pete Schwabba.
Yeah, we did.
On the, on the... All right.
The nightlight show.
What
are you talking
about?
Yeah, he's a lot of fun to talk to,
right?
Yes.
But
here's the thing, and he has brought this up a whole bunch of different times.
Okay.
His movie, the movie that he made.
The
Godfather of Green Bay, right?
He brought it up again.
And I asked him, well, where can I see this?
And he said, you can see it on Prime.
And then he said, you could see it for free on Tubi.
And I'm halfway through the movie.
And I got to say, this is really a good movie.
He wrote it, he produced it.
And
I've got to tell you,
he's
a
star.
And it's just gorgeous.
It's really,
it's a great movie.
And you know how a lot of these movies made in Wisconsin, poke fun at Wisconsin, the Green Bay Packers and cheese, they make fun of it, but they do it in a great way.
I mean, it's very dry, good sense of humor.
The quality is just, you know, fantastic.
Big thumbs up.
It's a huge thumbs up so far halfway through the movie.
I
don't know how it ends, but.
Was it in focus?
Yeah, as
a
matter of fact, it was.
Okay, good.
Wow.
I always like to check the focus.
I'm glad
you asked.
I know after the movie they interviewed some of the actors that were on the...
on the movie and they were saying how much, you know, they respected Pete as, you know, a director and everything like that.
Is that right?
Where'd you see that?
On YouTube somewhere.
Just search up Godfather after after show, you know, interviews.
Okay, well, it's interesting.
Good to know.
So a big thumbs up for me halfway through and I gotta tell you, you know, if you want to see a fun movie that takes off and a lot of the crazy stuff we believe and do in Wisconsin, this is the one.
Godfather of Green.
Yeah,
he's
a comedian.
I
mean,
it was like the story of his life, really.
And then he's told that if he appears at this Green Bay comedy bar that there's a guy there that will really, you know, make him a success or ignore him.
And he goes up to this bar and it's just a disaster.
But I mean, it really is, it's fun stuff.
I'd
love to check it out.
I can't wait.
He did a great job on that.
That's John Peterson.
I'm Gordie Young, just to make some introductions here.
Oh, and Dom is the engineer.
Dominic Lee.
If you didn't mention me, Catherine would have, you know, she would have been.
I know, I'm trying to
prevent her from.
Texting is constant.
Oh, there it is, a stream of the comments.
Yeah, OK.
It's cloudy out there this morning.
It's humid.
It's going to be very warm and humid all day.
It's already close to 80 degrees.
Oh,
you're a downer, aren't you?
You just come in here and you
start complaining about the
weather.
We could be in for some showers and scattered thunderstorms at times.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It looks like we're going to get some rain.
Yeah.
We're going to talk to Tim Slecker in a little while.
Dr. Tim Slecker from Busted Pencils.
Get the latest on whatever's going on in the world of education.
And also Abby Abramovich.
She's from Downedrens Distilling.
And she'll give us an update there.
We've got something in the works with her and we'll reveal a little bit of that a little bit later on.
And Jim Santel will join us again.
Seems like we just talked to him yesterday.
But we're going to talk to him again.
Oh, that was when we were filling in for Maggie Dawn.
Yeah.
So,
but like I mentioned, you know, the whole thing here, the Supreme Court made the decision after we had talked to him.
Right.
And he was like our last guest.
I know.
Yeah.
Supreme Court's very busy.
They just never take a break anymore.
13 minutes past the hour, should we get into what's, really?
What's the thing is?
What would you rather do?
What would you rather not do?
Would you rather do or not do?
Would you rather not do?
Okay.
All right, let's hear some reverb.
Go
ahead.
There we go.
Oh yeah.
Love to hear it.
Okay.
Alright,
alright,
alright.
Oh my god.
Okay.
Okay.
First question.
That was the first time you ever tried
to use reverb, wasn't it?
That was, yep, yep.
And it'll probably be the last.
I'm not using that again.
No,
it's just great.
It's just
unbelievable.
A couple of days ago I even added more, so I'm glad you guys heard that.
Alright.
It's
okay.
First question.
Would you rather be the ugliest person in the world?
or smell the ugliest, or not smell, smell the worst.
Sorry, the worst.
Smell the worst, yes.
Be the ugliest person
or smell the worst.
Good choices.
Okay.
I would
rather be the ugliest.
I wouldn't want to smell.
You know?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I think you're right on that one.
Yeah.
I'd go along with that.
There's a positive side to that, of course, you know.
What's
that?
There's somebody for everybody in this world.
And no matter how bad you look.
There's going to be someone before you.
Okay.
And that's the reason why I'm with Anne today.
Oh man.
All right.
All right, there you go.
See a little face.
A little would you rather knowledge from John?
You should have added reverb to that.
All right, second question.
Would you rather go a year with no hair or go a year with no fingernails at all?
This one's harder.
This one is definitely harder.
Definitely harder than the first
one.
Well, well, I'll go with no hair.
Go with no hair.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You gotta have your finger to, I play guitar and I gotta have finger dales.
I guess that's, yeah.
I guess that's true.
Well, just for support and for finger picking.
Look awful.
You didn't have finger dales.
I don't care.
So, you know, I, yeah.
Really?
Yeah, no hair, but I have a weird shaped head and I don't imagine that, you know,
It looks red looks smooth or anything.
So I yeah, it would be embarrassing.
It would be awful But okay, I'll go with that.
I would say yeah, I would I would say go no hair as
well Some people can
have you know bald head and look great.
Mm-hmm, but there are people that can't do that, right?
Okay,
sure.
Yeah, I guess I yeah,
yeah You're right.
You are
right.
Yeah.
Oh My god, well, thanks for agreeing with me.
You know, I would have gone off the deep end if you hadn't
We didn't provide anything
after.
There's
sparrows again, and they're like...
There's something up there.
They want to get... Yeah, there's something on the ledge or something over there that they want to get to.
Who's feeding the birds on the outside of her second-story window?
I don't know.
Yeah, it is looking cloudy out there.
It
looks like the rain
is... We're gonna get some storms.
Yeah?
Look, see?
There's the radar.
Oh, wow.
I know you're a weatherman.
Well, a
lot
of that is.
We
can't check the radar now
on
their phones.
Okay.
There it
is.
Okay, well, thank you for that.
I appreciate that.
You know, I'm in a very giving mood lately.
I want to give stuff away.
I've noticed
that.
I like to, you know, I care about people around here, civic media, and I, you know, I try to help them out whenever I can.
You owe me a 20.
Is there any chance you can pass that out too?
I shun you at every, at every opportunity, but I'm in a giving mood today, John, because
I've got some Chula Vista Resort tickets to give away.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
This
is a one night stay in a junior suite includes a Chula Vista Resort water pass for four.
Also includes a dining voucher at Kilburn City Grill and a zip line adventure at Chula Vista.
Wow.
Let's see, how could we give this away?
How about if we just take the first phone call this morning, 608-879-8255.
And if you haven't won anything in the last 30 days,
These tickets will be yours.
A Chula Vista overnight stay.
It's water passes for four and a stay overnight at the junior suite.
And it's all at Chula Vista.
So we'll take the first caller, 608-879-8255.
And by the
way, if it's just you and you don't have anybody else to take with you, there's Gordy, John,
and
John.
That equals four.
So we can all go with you.
All right.
Looks like we've got a caller right now.
All right, let's go to the phones.
They hesitated
until we offered our services.
And now
we have
a boom.
Troy, Troy from
Monholy.
Hey, Troy, how you doing?
Oh my god, I won.
You won, buddy.
You're a winner, man.
Congratulations.
You won a Chula Vista Resort Overnight Stadium Junior Suite.
Includes water passes for four people and dining voucher at Kilburn City and a zipline.
Congratulations, Troy.
Oh, wow, thanks.
All right.
Have a great
day,
guys.
Hang on, hang on.
Don't go
anywhere we got to get some information from.
Don will get the information.
We got
to get your name and address and email and date of birth.
Troy says he's going to take us
with him now.
So that's
right.
What?
Troy doesn't know anybody else, so it is John, Gordy,
and Don.
Exactly.
That'll be fun.
All right, Troy.
Congratulations.
All right, Troy.
Stay on the line for a couple of
minutes.
We need to get some info from you.
And we'll have another chance in our next hour.
Really?
Yeah.
We're going to give away some more.
All right.
Let's see.
Did I mention who's coming up?
Oh, yeah.
Jim Santel.
Uh, we'll be with us also, Abby Abramovich from, uh, Downdrens Distilling.
Yeah, we got some, uh, important stuff to get to with Tim Slacker from Busted Pencils.
We'll be talking again about AI.
They're really on this thing.
Yeah.
And we'll also be talking about Christopher Rufo, who, uh, is known mostly for CRT.
Okay, okay critical race
theory
and and of course he's a broad net to DEI and everything else So we'll be getting into that Manhattan Institute.
Yeah, and we'll talk to Tim Slecker in about 15 minutes right here on John and Gordy in the morning for a Thursday stay with us,
please
How we doing?
Italian shoes.
WMDX, John and Gordy in the morning.
Check us out on the Civic Media app as well in case that tower goes out again like yesterday.
And you'll be able to hear the show and text us and voice notice.
Yeah.
All right.
This portion of the show brought to you by Madison Hearing Aid Center.
They're at 4706 Cottage Grove Road in Madison.
They can help you out if you're having hearing problems.
You can go to their website, MadisonHearingAidCenter.com, take an initial hearing test there, and then set up an appointment with Jim or Sarah.
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Their goal isn't just selling hearing aids.
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They
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That's MadisonHearingAidCenter.com.
Okay?
All right.
That sounds good.
All right.
All right.
The big plan now by the Trump administration.
Yeah.
their big plan in order to deal with the Epstein fallout, what is it today is to go silent.
So now they don't want to talk about it, you know, maybe if they stop talking about it, everybody else will stop talking about it.
Go
away.
Yeah, they're going to refuse to say anything about the investigation that they've been revealed that, you know, Trump
is on the list a number of times Pam Bondi said so.
Of course she acted like, oh, we didn't even have a list anymore, you
know.
She has blown her credibility so many times it is almost frightening.
And yet she gets out there in front of the cameras.
You know, the person that really bothers me is Tulsa Gabbard, okay?
Oh yeah.
She is just, this is a showboat of showboats.
She came out, had a press conference yesterday, was it, or the day before?
She came out in a white outfit, you know?
And she has that dark hair butt, those white streaks.
And that white outfit and the white streaks, wow.
Just
gorgeous.
Just stunning.
Oh, man.
And people just, you know, were falling all over themselves, trying to figure out what to say to her.
She was so stunning.
No, she she's all presentation with no content whatsoever.
I can't understand how Well, anyway, I guess I can't understand how anybody is in the administration personally They're they're all completely unqualified and yet they're out there.
They're doing their thing
now I understand that they buzz there's also the house is involved and you know the
yeah
Congress yeah,
and they can
vacation well there
But there's word out today that they have subpoenaed Bill and Hillary Clinton.
So we're really going back in time.
It says Bill and Hillary Clinton subpoenaed according to the New York Post.
I feel slighted.
I mean,
I haven't noticed that.
House Pan
votes to subpoena Bill and Hillary over possible links to Jezain Maxwell.
If they're just asking
anybody, I
don't know why we're
not on the list.
Yeah, I know.
When
are we
going to get
something?
I know.
We may not have anything to offer, but I think that's the point.
Exactly.
Let's just keep asking questions of people who don't know anything, and if we drag it out long enough.
Really, Bill and Hillary.
I know.
Really reaching back.
All right, let's go to the phones.
We've got Mark on the line.
Mark, welcome to the show.
Good morning, Mark.
Yeah, just keep on flinging, and then maybe something will stick.
Because of the Supreme Court and Joe Biden and Barack Obama are both, they can just claim, well, this was just under our official duties.
So we're immune from anything.
And, uh, yeah, yeah.
I mean, it is just, uh, it is just beyond me, you know, what they, what they think they're going to accomplish because they're just serving Donald Trump and they all hate, you know, the, uh, and what's, what's, what they're fortunate, you know, that if indeed, as I've,
I think I've said before, if indeed the Justice Department was indeed weaponized against Donald Trump, Donald Trump would not be a free man right now.
They would have just ignored the courts as acid be in jail.
They just don't seem to get it.
Donald Trump is Mr... claims offense against everybody and that he still claims that.
Poor little Donald Trump.
What the heck?
He's turned the White House into a...
pale copy of Versailles with the old leaf everywhere.
I
know.
It really looks crappy.
Yeah, it's so good.
It's gaudy.
I think,
you
know,
we used to use the
word gaudy a
lot.
All
right.
We're going to have to start using it again.
It just looks tacky.
Oh, tacky.
Yeah.
That too.
Yeah.
I mean, it's not even attractive except to, you know, that then
It's not supposed to it's not supposed to look like you know mirror log was not like anything other than in the White House It's not supposed to look like a palace for goodness sakes President is not a king Yeah, but apparently the anti-federalists were right and this is what the presidency is gonna be with a with a man You know like I've said before so on federalist 67 Hamilton said oh, no the president is not gonna be a Imperial president.
It's not he's not gonna be sitting in his office surrounded by minions and mistresses and
now have his murderous genus areas.
And, uh, of course he does have his murderous genus areas now, which is ace.
Yeah.
They might
be going, not all going killing people, you know, right and left, but I mean, there's certainly, well, that's next diet and custody now.
Well, yes, that's next.
So,
uh, you can meet like animals out of out of dishes with their hands, you know, behind their backs.
Yeah.
You mentioned that
you actually give us a text on it where they're eating with their, uh, their, their hands and.
Yeah.
Well, it's just outrageous at the
other hand.
I mean, alligator
Alcatraz basically.
Yeah.
Auschwitz.
I mean, it's nothing more than a concentration camp because it might be a little clear.
It might look a little cleaner than those, but it's just because it's made out of metal rather than wood like Nazis had.
Mark,
thank you for
the call.
Yeah.
All right.
We'll talk to you later.
And we've got more coming up.
We've got Tim Slecker from Busted Pencils next.
Yep.
On John and Gordy in the morning, stay with us.
Yeah, it's Johnny Gordy.
Another big, beautiful morning.
The clouds, I think, are just kind of wrapping around Madison, not going through.
Isn't that nice?
Is that what you think?
That's what I'm beginning to believe.
It is kind of cloudy over St.
Street, so we're a block off the Capitol here, and we could be in for some scattered showers, maybe a couple of thunderstorms along the way, and it's just warm and humid.
It's going to stay that way all day long.
And this portion of the show brought to you by Virlo Mattress.
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Some things have remained constant throughout that time.
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I had a
dream about the adjustable beds.
I did.
I
don't know what it was.
I just remember waking up
thinking, oh
my gosh, I'm dreaming about adjustable beds now.
And
I sleep on one.
I just, you know, I can't get enough of it.
Was it a
good dream?
Was it a
deep dream?
No, I
can't remember them.
My wife remembers every detail of every dream and I
go,
we relive it each and every morning.
Wow, lucky you.
I know.
Let's go now to...
Tim Slacker
from Busted
Pencils is with us each and every Thursday morning.
Talking about education.
And yeah, a lot of things are happening in education and we're still debating the AI thing that is taking place and sweeping through education as we speak.
And
you
guys are now finally, you know, kind of becoming a little more dis...
Trustful of the whole idea of AI, you know, you don't trust as much as you used to Yeah,
I don't know well for example right now You know
I'm pretty sure that this John that I'm talking to is not really John because I mean the image of you shows you with a Barbie t-shirt.
That
has to
be an
AI creation.
You would never
wear a...
a Barbie t-shirt.
That's true.
I mean, well,
how do we know that you're you're not an AI, you know, with pencils through your head, pencils through your skull.
It looks very bizarre, Tim.
I
don't I don't know if it's the distrust.
I think what we were trying to say is that, you know, this this reality of acknowledging that, you know, what
what AI can produce is can really deceive people and that deception you know is turning what I worry about is some people getting to the standpoint of saying you know well
I don't believe in anything anymore.
I don't believe anything's true.
I know for sure somebody's always lying to me.
And living in a democracy where we're supposed to have some form of trust, and particularly in our institutions, which we already know trust in the institutions of this country are low right now.
AI, how that's contributing to that distrust, we worry about it.
I mean, there was another piece just talking about also the kind of distrust students and teachers and faculty are having back and forth with each other.
Faculty and teachers aren't sure when kids are using it
and
they're worried.
Kids are concerned that teachers are accusing them of using it when they're not.
You know, I'm not distrustful of that.
There was a point though And I don't know if you heard of Johnny and I talking about this in the the article article we were citing I forget there's actually quite a bit of research now starting to come down on this idea of trust but It there was a thing about saying well if you use AI do people start to look at you
Well, you must not be that intelligent if you need AI to help you.
Yeah, that's interesting.
You
know, and for me, I was sitting there going, I'm like, okay, so I think that my use of AI is really contributing to me being more productive, making things more, you know, kind of.
just creative, I can get things done faster, and never popped into my mind that people might be looking at me going, well, you know, I mean, he uses AI.
Yeah, yeah.
Not, yeah, you know, I mean, taking easy way out to him, you know.
Yeah, you know.
And I was just like, wait.
I thought people looked at me funny,
you
know,
for all kinds
of
reasons.
Yeah, but, you know, but the eye, you know.
You guys were, you guys were talking about that and it just seems like, you know, the AI thing could be a lazy way to do things, but I think Johnny brought up the fact that people may use it just for the more menial tasks, you know, the things that are just, you know, normal everyday task worthy things that you have to do anyway.
So it could do that, get that out of the way while you do the better research, the more in-depth personal research, right?
Yeah.
I mean, think about this.
I'm working on something right now that I need to put together a budget and a timeline for completing a project, right?
I use AI, I describe the project, I put it down and I'm like, you know, here's the budget number we're shooting for.
And I said, you know, give me a hypothetical budget and a hypothetical timeline.
And, you know, it can do all that work really quickly, right?
And I think that's a great thing because now I can take that hypothetical and put it to the team that's looking at that very quickly and we can make decisions where, you know,
putting together a hypothetical before AI you know that in and of itself was a huge task where now I can complete that very quickly and get it to a group of us so that we can look at it and make revisions.
I think that's an incredibly powerful use of AI because you know the fact that it can whip together a budget and you look at the product and you go okay actually that's not bad but I don't know you know I'm I guess I get the complex of going okay you know so when I
bring this hypothetical budget to the next meeting, people are gonna look at me and go, you know,
we know you used AI to put this together,
Tim.
Well, calm down.
It's not so bad.
I
just thought of a perfect example.
I was in production for a long period of time, audio production for, you know, some of the advertising agencies around town and they would bring their scripts in.
And then finally, looking at those scripts, talking to the talent, hearing how they say it, we make a lot of adjustments in
order to make it better.
Rewrites.
Yeah, and the rewrites are where the
really happened.
Right.
I think what you're talking about is exactly the same kind of thing.
Yeah.
I mean, what I'm bringing is I'm bringing a document with the intention for full revision.
Yes.
It just it just gives us that ability to start much quicker.
Yes.
Yes.
You know,
and and and dig into the meat earlier.
Um you know, and so anyway, I I I just here's the other part.
It's not
As I forget who quoted this, but it ain't gonna uninvent itself.
And so we need to keep thinking about it, you know, and I don't know unless they maybe start training the AIs on, you know, like some kind of self-destructive thoughts.
Well, maybe
maybe it'll
I think we have the media doing that for us.
As I mentioned, before we went on the air, there's a headline at NPR saying, Trump's EPA now says greenhouse gases don't endanger people.
So that has now entered AI, and AI is going to spring that out on us every once in a while.
I'm waiting for AI, though, to one time go, OK.
This is dumb.
I can't do it.
Yeah, even.
I'm sorry, I can hear the air gun.
Even I don't believe this crap.
Well, you know, a lot of people are...
angry with Grock, you know, X's AI, and they're angry because Grock sounds too woke, too liberal, and they're getting angry.
And of course, you know, Musk keeps making adjustments to it, and it's now starting to sound like Musk saying, you know, Nazi this, Nazi that.
So, yeah, now I think that's not still, it's not appeasing the omega cult out there, so.
And
that's what I
worry about when when he started making adjustments to AI and it started sounding like him That's when I became very skeptical of the whole idea of AI and that's why I mentioned to you last week I think we talked about it and that is that we have to have some kind of guardrail some official Stamp of approval from the government, which is now you can't trust the government because it's under Trump, but some stamp of approval where
they get accredited in a certain way for providing information through their AI, specifically designed AI.
And that's kind of where we are, right?
I mean, I think that leads into the other story we want to cover, which is, right?
And at this moment, we have this sense from every special interest group.
And I'm serious, I'm not going to give anyone more credit or...
If you don't give me what I believe to be true, I now look at you as a source of disinformation.
I'm talking about in the big, right?
It's like, you know, I need my radio news.
I need my information about this because if I ever read something counter to what I believe,
I know that it's not an opposing view that I should take seriously and look critically at.
I know for sure that it's just you trying to control me.
And that's where we say that's unhealthy and whether AI contributes more to that because it can produce things that
give people a sense of going, see, this is real here.
And I know that there's a truth here and that you're trying to hide the truth, bury it from me.
You know, and so this, everybody's now like, you know, on your, we're on our individual teams and within our individual teams, we don't have a central source of information that all the teams, no matter what side you're on, you can look at and go, oh, instead we've said, you know what?
We're going to have our own news gathering and production.
And, you know, because you can't trust those lefty woke Marxist liberals because you know what they're up to, you know, they're up there.
They're out to conquer the world.
And so we're going to create our own sources of information.
You're you're you're referencing the Manhattan Institute.
Well,
yeah, yeah.
Here
it is.
Here it is.
What is that?
Christopher Rufo, who was a big supporter or anti-supporter of critical race theory, and then he said he was going to expand it into other areas because it was so successful, making people believe that critical race theory was actually taught in K through 12.
So he thought, why not?
You know, if people believe that, let's go with DEI.
And now that's Manhattan Institute and Christopher Rufo.
talking about, you know, clearing out colleges and making sure that, you know, like, I think it was ending social and political activism on campus, which is scary as hell.
What?
Well, now, remember, I know we're coming up on
a break here, but
depending, what do you mean, stopping?
It's making sure that
incorrect bad liberal protesting and criticism stops.
And the contract that the Manhattan has put on higher education is going to mandate that the things that they care about though, that's going to be something that
universities must do.
We'll continue this conversation in just a few moments with Dr. Tim Slecker from Busted Pencil.
Stay with us on John and Gordy in the morning.
Don't worry, God, don't be stupid.
Don't worry, God, don't be stupid.
here at WMTX, John Gordy in the morning.
Oh, we
got the action.
We got
the action.
652 Cloudy, maybe some scattered showers or thunderstorm along the way.
Warm and humid all day long.
In this portion of the show brought to you by Madison Hearing Aid Center, 4706 Cottage Grove Road in Madison.
They have fast and flexible appointments and they will be helping you if you need some help with your hearing.
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We're talking to Dr. Tim Slecker from Busted Pencils and we mentioned earlier that the Manhattan Institute and Christopher Rufo going after the colleges, I think they're really going after Harvard in this.
instance but at the same time they've asked for an end to social and political activism on campus and I think they found the Achilles heel because Columbia University has reached a settlement with the Trump administration and they're gonna pay out 220 million dollars and the point of this is they're being accused of failing to adequately address anti-seminate
or anti-Semitic harassment on campus.
And that is what they're going for.
That's what they're talking about.
And I guess, you know, this is where their focus is at this point.
Focus on campus.
You know, we've been doing this for at least the last 60, 70 years easily.
Well, OK, so I'm going to try to do something here for that.
that the Rufo and their people will never do, which is to say, okay, what is a university and a place like that and its commitment to free speech, right?
Free speech.
And so you say, well, a protest fits within a free speech.
And so it should be allowed.
And so they shouldn't be outlawing that.
Now, what you can't do on a college campus,
is that you can't make people have a fear that they are going to potentially be harmed, or you can't interfere with a group of people trying to conduct their business, right?
And so some of what happened in some of these protests were, you know, we're talking about the protests were for protesting the Israeli war in Gaza.
And so Jewish students felt
harassed and sometimes even, you know, threatened to the point that they couldn't conduct their lives the way they're supposed to be on campus.
Well, that did happen in some places and that should be acknowledged as that is bad, inappropriate, illegal, threatening behavior.
That's not free speech.
That's not protesting.
And so
Cover that admit that take care of it.
But but what's happened now though is is that?
What Rufo and them have said is is that so everything that happens on campus see that's the woke mind virus That's the left liberalism and we need to outlaw.
Yes that and you're gonna like wait a minute.
No The laws are already on the books.
Yes, let's say
Student you're not allowed to do the things that happened and guess what?
Enforce the laws and this is where the conservatives always drive me crazy because they're like, you know We don't need new laws for gun control.
We just need to enforce the laws like okay, then we don't need new Bands on campus protesting we need to allow the protesting and when there is bad behavior Illegal behavior or things that go against what we have said, you know how this happens then you enforce that
You don't turn it into a national spectacle, and then...
have essentially a university like Columbia stepping up and going, you know what, make it go away.
Here's $220 million, which then creates an atmosphere on campus that starts to say like, okay, I don't think I'm going to ever step out and point out that something's bothering me.
And you go, that's supposed to be the hallmark of higher education.
Left, right, middle, you should have the ability to set up and go, hey,
Here's what I think.
Even if it's offensive, if you're not interfering with people and not destroying property, you can come on a college campus, you know, and it just reminds me 1987, I forget the guy's name, but here he is on, you know, this po-dunk little college where I went, Edinburgh University, you know, and he's walking around campus yelling at all of us about, you know, we're going to H-E double toothpicks.
Because, you know, because we were drinking and, you know, exploring sexualities and things like that.
And guess what?
He was allowed to come on campus to do that.
And he should have been allowed, and we should allow that type of thing.
But the Manhattan Project in Rufo...
They're using these times where things might not actually be happening according to the way they're supposed to.
And then using that as leverage to come in from what was their original belief to begin with, which is we want to be in control.
We want our view of the world enforced.
Let's use this opportunity to say, see, we're going to outlaw this left wing, woke indoctrination, and we're going to install right wing.
indoctrination and we're going to do that under the guise of establishing objectivity and freedom and nothing could be further from the truth.
It just seems like when they use that language it's political and it should be challenged in court somewhere because they're picking on an individual individual's political belief and that's protected by the First Amendment.
Yeah,
yeah.
Like I said, I mean, yeah.
We gotta leave it
there, guys.
Yeah.
Dr.
Tim Slucker, thank you for joining us.
We almost solved that problem here.
Thanks for cutting us off.
Sorry.
We were on the verge of a solution.
Damn.
Oh, and when you find the real John who's not
wearing
a Barbie shirt, let me know.
All
right, Tim, we'll do that.
Appreciate you being with us, Busted Pencils, with new podcasts Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
And they're on the weekends too on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Thank you, Dr. Tim.
We'll return with more of John.
after
this.
John and Gordy.
Sing it.
Cluffy.
Okay,
alright, WMDX, yeah, you heard.
And we're here.
keeping your company in the morning from State Street, Broadcaster, from the Capital City, Madison, check us out on the Civic Media app, and voice notice as long as you keep it clean, we'll play it right here on the air.
Yeah, and you can call us 608-879-8255.
Cloudy start this morning
and
some light rain in the area.
We could be in for some thunderstorms and steady warm temperatures.
It's going to feel hot and humid all day long.
So just get used to it.
I don't want to hear any complaints.
Just go inside.
Stay in the
air conditioning.
Go see a movie.
They have air conditioning at movie theaters.
Guess you've had it,
huh?
I've had it.
People complaining to me.
All right, what I hear about it anymore seven minutes past the hour Oh, you know what?
I'm in a very caring giving mood.
You sound like this morning just
like just like last hour
when I was in a mood to, you know, maybe give something to somebody who wants.
Give
back,
right?
Give
back, that's right, give back.
Pay forward, let's hear it.
Yeah, something like that.
In fact, right now we have another Chula Vista getaway.
It's an overnight stay at a junior suite.
Chula Vista Resort, water passes for four people and it also includes a zipline adventure and dining voucher at Kilborn City Grill.
Zipline.
Yeah, that's cool.
Oh, it's fun stuff.
Yeah.
And you could be a winner right now if you're the first caller, 608-879-8255.
If you have not won something from Civic Media in the last 30 days, give us call, 608-879-8255.
And looks like we got a caller already there, Dom.
Let's go to the phone lines.
But we invited ourselves along with Troy.
I know, I don't
know.
Who do we have on the line?
Is this Don?
Yes it is.
Hi Don, where you calling from?
I'm up north.
Up north, good.
Up
north there, hey, okay.
Have you
been to
Chula Vista before?
Yeah, several times in my children were younger.
Yeah, excellent.
Well, you're going again.
We'll get the information from you.
Hang on the line here.
Wow.
Congratulations.
Yeah.
Thank
you.
Yes.
Well, you'll have fun at Chula Vista Resort in
Wisconsin Dales.
You can always invite John
and Gordy
and Dom along with you.
Yeah.
I mean, you could do
that if you wanted to.
I do want to do that.
Do
you?
Come on up, guys.
Oh, OK.
All
right.
Cool.
All right.
Definitely get Don's information here.
All right.
Yeah.
Don't miss
this one.
All right, congratulations,
Don.
Hang on the line here, Don.
We'll get all the information we need, and we'll be giving away some more tickets along the way.
In fact, tomorrow we have Brewer tickets to give away, because it's free ticket
Friday.
So we'll probably do the rest of the Chula Vista tickets on Monday.
All right.
OK.
Well, that's
quite the plan.
I've got the plan, and that's it.
We're going to the game, the Brewer Cubs game, on Tuesday.
Yes, Tuesday.
That's
a tight race, though.
Oh,
I
know it.
Yeah, they're fighting it out for the National League Central Division, the Cubs and the Brewers, so this
should be great.
The Brewers are a game ahead now, I
think.
I believe so, and then, yeah, I didn't hear what they did yesterday.
They won.
Did they?
Yeah.
Okay, yeah, I don't know what the Cubs did, but in any case, yes, it's a tight race, and they're in Milwaukee for the next series there, and we'll be at the Tuesday evening game.
Should be a lot of fun with our winners.
Now, you know, I mentioned earlier that, you know, the White House
idea now to deal with the Jeffrey Epstein list is to just remain silent.
Is that right?
So as I'm looking at the story, I had it on first thing when we got here this morning, the headline changed.
Now the
White House tightens its grip on Jeffrey Epstein messaging by putting out different information to confuse people and change the subject matter.
So, you know, I just, here's the thing.
We should decide now.
Do we want to keep covering the Jeffrey Epstein thing or not?
We know that these guys are in quicksand and they're going down quickly.
Why should we extend an arm, you know, just repeating the same old BS over and over?
We can't
ignore it though.
We can't just ignore the thing.
It's just continuing and what can we do?
about it.
We got to report at least the headlines on it.
Well, you know, I've
got to get into it went to, you know, Trump's wedding.
You have to be pretty close to getting an invite.
From sweating.
But now it's all about Jelaine Maxwell, Julian.
Do you know how to say that?
I
don't know.
Is there any way that we could get an exact
pronunciation?
Yeah, I think we do.
Oh, you
know, Julian.
Let's turn to Julian.
What does he say about Jelaine Maxwell?
Looking
at how to pronounce the name of British socialite who is known in particular for her association with financier and convicted criminal Jeffrey Abstein.
Now, the question is on her first name or that name thing, which is of French origin.
And in French, it can be pronounced either Guylaine or Gislaine.
But in British, as is the case for her, her first name is generally pronounced Guylaine Maxwell.
Guylaine.
Guylaine,
okay.
All right.
I think that's what they're seeing in the news as well.
Guylaine.
All
right.
Well, I'm glad we got Julian on that.
All right.
Now
we know officially.
It's funny, we're sitting there saying, well, how is it said?
How is it said?
You know, we're looking and looking and reading through stories and they never mentioned her first time.
So we're sitting here flailing.
Now we know.
But that's behind the scenes, all right?
Now we know.
Yeah, Galeen.
All
right.
All right.
This portion of the show brought to you by Virlo Mattress.
You can wake up, you can sleep better on a Virlo Mattress.
Their sale is continuing, the 4th of July sales event continues, and they also are still selling at a discount price the adjustable bed frames.
Just
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find out about the adjustable bed frames, 30 to 50% off.
30 to 50% off if you mention my name.
That's right, and the adjustable bed frame, they have the V9.
That sounds
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That is something else, yes.
Yes, you can save on a generous $200 off on your purchase of the V9 adjustable bed frame.
Find
out more at Virlo Mattress Eastside or Westside or go to Virlo.com, okay?
All right.
Two stories, a bad one and a good one.
Okay.
Well, why don't you go
with let's let's go with the it's not a good story, but it's it's surreal.
So why don't we get to that one?
It is the Tesla restaurant diners, the retro diners that are being built possibly throughout the entire
World that's right.
Tesla has launched a retro inspired drive-in diner that doubles as an electric vehicle charging station Now you can see I
was
looking up charging stations online For the area yeah, this story popped up and it's true.
It's true.
It is a diner vehicle charging station restaurant The first one and it's up and running
It is at West Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood.
Okay.
Perfect place for this.
Yeah.
Grotesque monster.
So it's a diner.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, yeah, I guess so.
Listen to this.
Okay.
The place has 80 supercharging stalls.
80.
80 of them.
Making it the largest urban supercharging station in the world.
I think somewhere there's a diner.
Somewhere around.
The charging
that doesn't sound like an eyesore, does it?
OK, there's more here.
OK, you do need your Tesla touchscreen in order to order ahead if you want to order food ahead of time or see what they're playing on one of the two giant 66 foot LED mega screens.
What?
There's one screen on each level.
So there's a two level.
Diner.
It's not much of a diner.
It's not a
diner at all.
It's a diner with 66 foot.
Sounds like Camp Randall, you know, with a roof.
That's
bizarre.
Yeah, yeah.
A tech reporter, sorry, your marriage shares the menu by saying that it's $13 for a hot dog.
You know, actually, the menu doesn't sound that expensive.
It makes it sound expensive, but it really is.
And $15 for fried chicken and waffles.
Okay, and then offering breakfast options as well.
The diner is open 24 hours.
Musk posted saying that the more diners are coming to other cities around the world back in 2021, get this, Tesla applied for a patent using the Tesla name for goods and services, including restaurants.
An interesting note, I found this in the story too.
Elon wants to now create X-Money.
We
kind of
knew that, yeah.
This is the whole point of deregulating, taking doge into the government, deregulating everything, because he was stopped from using X as X-Money.
It's
like a PayPal takeoff.
And this is his push.
He had
in interest in PayPal at one time.
And he was ousted.
And in fact, way back when, 20 years ago, he wanted to name, he didn't want PayPal, he wanted it to be x.com.
No kidding.
Instead of PayPal.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
So that's kind of the history on X and why he renamed Twitter, which is the dumbest thing in the world.
One of the dumbest things we've seen ever happen in the world into X.
which doesn't roll off the tongue at all in a conversation.
Stuck with it,
yeah.
Go back to Twitter.
Yeah.
Change it back.
Well, we do.
We kind of switch back and forth.
Say Twitter X. Yeah.
Well, I tweeted this, yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
So that sounds kind of fun, doesn't it?
Can't wait till these giant... How big are those screens again?
Sixty.
Sixty-six feet.
And two of them.
Two of them, one on each floor.
And then of course you have the charging stations.
These
are super charging stations.
You know,
take about 20 minutes.
What does that mean, just
faster?
Yeah, you can charge up your vehicle in about 20 minutes.
Wow.
To about 80% so yeah, that's not too bad, but 80 of them that's
just enough time to go in and have a have a $15 hot dog.
Yeah, I'm back out of your Vehicles charge.
Well, that's the point.
You know you charge and then you're kind of wandering around, right?
Why not?
You know, I looked up charging stations here in Madison as well a new space car that yeah, I got the space
It is a space car.
Have you seen John's car yesterday?
Yeah.
Yeah, we checked it out.
I actually kind of like stuck my head inside.
It was really it was crazy if you if you watch the old mirror Marionette shows the super car.
Oh Super car.
Yeah, the
Marionette.
Yeah, the version.
I like
space car space car.
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
I was looking for these and Mg and E if you're in the district they
They sponsor a lot of these super charging stations.
You don't get a discount.
You get discounts at other places.
But the superchargers, they don't offer you the electric discount by using them.
So I'm kind of angry about
that.
But you found a place to charge it up, right?
That's your car.
Space car.
Yeah, level two.
There are three levels where you just plug it into the wall.
It's level one.
Level two is just a normal charge, which they recommend doing almost all the time.
Super charging where you're out in the highway and you got to go someplace and you're halfway through your trip.
You got to get that super charge
in
and buy a $15 hot dog and watch a show or a movie on the 66 foot LED screen on one of the two floors.
I'm just impressed by the really the sleek look of that car.
I mean, it's like a hot rod.
away and then
it's sort
of, but it's very futuristic looking.
And I, you know, I'm impressed that at your age that you were driving that car, because it seems like you should have had that midlife crisis 20
or 30 years
ago.
I've
been accused
of that.
I was accused of that.
I see the cop's heads bob up when they see my car go by and they've got the
radar going.
Coming up next, we're going to talk to Appie Abramovich from Dundren's Distilling on Johnny.
Gordy in the morning.
WMDX, it's 92.7.
You can also get us on the Civic Media app where there is no dial and it's just kind of a mystery.
It's not a mystery.
You just press on the WMDX button and
you can listen
to each and every morning.
That's right.
We were on Maggie Dawn's show yesterday and we promoted ourselves a lot.
So we hope we have new listeners statewide.
Yes.
It's 723.
It's cloudy out there and warm and humid all day long.
Some scattered showers, maybe a thunderstorm along the way.
And it's going to be pretty muggy.
So use the air conditioning.
That's my advice.
All right.
Well, that's it.
Stay indoors.
Abby Abramovich joins us.
Good morning, Abby.
Good morning, guys.
Abby is with Doundren's Distilling.
We appreciate coming in this morning and being a sponsor for our Cubs Brewers Ticket Giveaway.
That's right.
We're going with our winner on Tuesday to the big game at Amfam Field.
And thank you for helping us sponsor this.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah,
that
was fantastic.
So for people that don't know about Doundren's Distilling, just give us the overview here.
You have a lot to offer.
Yeah, for sure.
So it's a small family-owned business that my husband and I own and operate.
We are out in Cottage Grove.
We have a tasting room.
and a giant outdoor cocktail garden.
We're open year round.
We do tons and tons of events.
We, you know, from pro wrestling we have going on this Saturday on the 26th.
Pro wrestling.
Yeah, they build a ring out in our cocktail garden.
Oh my god.
It's an absolute blast.
Have you done this before?
Pro wrestling?
Yeah, this is like the third, this is the fourth year in a row we've done it.
We do it a couple of times this summer.
How kind of people do you have
wrestling
out there?
Anyone and everyone from kids to...
People with
kids would be fun,
you
know.
People of all ages have an absolute blast, I will tell you.
But so we do tons and tons of different events, family friendly, pet friendly.
Is
it like you have a maximum alcohol limit?
people who are getting out through wrestling.
You don't want, you know, people who get sloppy.
Well, luckily the wrestling is not actually open to the public for competing.
So you're just a patron and watching others that are the pros doing it.
Well, maybe we could have a
Johnny Gordy wrestling match out
there.
I don't know if that's a good idea.
During
the
event.
But we are going to do something special on September 6th for some of our listeners, an appreciation party and also a tour of your facilities, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
We're going to be doing a giveaway for 20 individuals and a guest where it's going to be like a private tour with myself and my husband going around the distillery back in the production area, kind of doing a tasting of some of our top.
products and it'll be a really fun event.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to that.
It's going to be a lot of fun and I think our friend Dr. Chris Cameron, our dentist friend, is going to be along to entertain us all at this event.
And we'll have some prizes, a few giveaways and some t-shirts and that kind of thing to
some of
our listeners.
And again, that's September 6th and we'll
give more information in the next week or two on that.
Yeah, for sure.
Thanks
for sponsoring the end of the Brewer Ticket giveaway.
Yeah, I appreciate it.
You
saved my marriage.
John's wife is a Cubs fan.
Oh, good,
yeah.
Sam, Sam.
I'm also a Cubs fan.
Really?
Oh,
yeah.
So, really, you're a Cubs fan?
Yeah, yeah, it's coming.
It's wax and waned over the years.
Oh, really?
If I had to pick a team, it's the Cubs.
How was it?
We talked to
Pete Trubb.
Was he the one who said that he
grew up near
Wrigley?
But he doesn't care.
He doesn't watch the Cubs anymore because they won the pennant.
That's it.
You know, a lot of Cubs fans, after they won in 2016 after not winning for, you know, a century.
Now they don't have to pay
attention,
right?
Well, it's kind of like, yeah.
They were lovable losers up until then.
And then they won the World Series.
And that's kind of like a whole different thing.
But anyway, back to down.
What are your hours there?
So right now we're still in summer hours.
We're open.
It's a little bit different day by day.
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we get open at 4 p.m.
and we're open till 9, 10 o'clock.
And then Fridays we actually are 3 to 11 and then the weekends we open at 11 a.m.
Now I understand you also have a children's play
area.
Yeah, we have a playground outside.
So in our outdoor
cocktail gardens like an 11,000 square foot area.
We've got grassy areas.
We've got like perennial garden beds.
There's a stage.
We've got all sorts of cool like string lights.
It's beautiful at night.
And then we have a playground.
So family friendly for sure.
So
the kids can
carry around a highball glass.
I mean, not recommended and we don't serve individuals under 21.
But it is a great time for socialization.
I apologize, Abby.
No, it's okay.
But it's a great time that people can come hang out and there's something for your kids to do.
So you can have a human interaction with your family, with your friends, and your children have something to do.
That's the way it was done way back
when.
hang
out with her parents, you know, we're at the bar and
we
used to hang out in the bar and,
you know,
just adventure
and listen
to the jukebox.
And that's what that's Wisconsin.
That's
Wisconsin.
That's what we do here.
But the cocktail garden is also very heavily inspired by like German beer gardens.
Oh, it is.
It's literally just like it's a park, right?
I can't really go out there.
You know, happens to be beer there along with.
Everything else.
We have mocktails.
We have wine.
We have beer.
We have soda.
And then we have specialty cocktails of our spirits.
What do you
got?
We have like 40 different spirits.
We make flavored rums, flavored vodka's, gin, whiskey, liqueurs.
We really focus on highlighting ingredients with local producers.
I promise I'm going
to try each and every one of
those.
Carry me out one
party.
If people want to find out more, what's the website?
Downdrens.com.
That's D-O-U-N-D-R-I-N-S.com.
Abbi Abramovich, thanks for being with us.
We'll see you at the meet and greet appreciation party September
6th.
Awesome.
Thank you so much, guys.
Thank you.
That's how our listeners more about that as it gets closer.
Coming back with more, stay with us.
WMDX, John and Gordy in the morning.
And in just a few moments, we'll be talking to Jim Santel, big decision from the Supreme Court.
We'll be talking about that in just a few moments.
735, cloudy, maybe some scattered showers and thunderstorms at times today.
Very warm and humid all day long.
This portion of the show brought to you by Madison Hearing Aid Center.
Not sure what others are saying because of loud background noise.
Are you always saying, what?
What'd you say?
Yeah.
Huh?
Yeah.
Well, you need to call Jim and Sarah at Madison Hearing Aid Center.
They help me.
They help John.
They can help you too.
Give them a call.
608-249-4077 or go to their excellent website, MadisonHearingAidCenter.com.
You can take an initial hearing test there and then make an appointment.
They're at 4706 Cottage Grove Road in Madison.
They do a great job.
Madison Hearing Aid Center.
Okay, so I couldn't use that as an excuse.
What
do you mean?
Oh, I didn't hear you.
I know.
Too bad, you know.
Let's move on.
All right, let's get to the topic at hand here.
Jim, welcome to the program.
We were on yesterday afternoon.
This decision was not.
Made at that point.
Yeah, we had some stuff.
Yeah, we've got a new thing to talk about and it's a huge Decision Jim what the heck is going on here?
This is he's just you know, it's like striking you know like bowling Hitting strikes every time he goes to the Supreme Court
Right exactly and this is not new Regrettably, but it certainly is a part of the overall trend if you will from the Supreme Court
And it sounds fairly wonky again, but it's an important group.
It's called the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
These are the folks who keep everything safe and secure, from toys to batteries, all kinds of things in the household.
And so we know that a number of months ago, three of the commissioners had decided to cast some votes to stop the import of poorly made lithium ion batteries and objecting to some staffing cuts.
That draws the attention of my president.
and he terminates them or tries to.
And that's the most important point.
They appeal this as they rightly can under the theory that president has no capacity legally, congressionally to do this, can't fire commissioners.
And lower courts agree with that.
They know it's got to be reinstated.
Supreme Court just yesterday says, nope, once again, the president does have this capacity to do it.
He is the commander in chief.
He is the Constitution vests the executive power.
in the president without any more reference than that.
That's
not good.
Go ahead and fire them.
This once again, as we have talked in this broadcast repeatedly, emergency docket, shadow docket, no reasons simply giving Donald Trump permission to do the illegal thing that he is doing when it comes to these and other folks.
This is outrageous.
I don't even know how to approach something like this.
You know, they did mention that these are three democratic
Yes.
Individuals.
And using politics in the reasoning, you would think somewhere along the way that would be a first amendment issue, wouldn't it?
It should be all.
All amendments, but yes, absolutely.
All amendments, yeah.
Right?
Right?
It's just in the names of Murray Boyle, Richard Trumka, Alexander Hunsarek.
And again, even though, again, they've got those partisan backgrounds,
They come to this as do all these folks, as commissioners.
They don't do things that are political, overtly partisan in nature, right?
They do things to keep us safe and secure.
That should be an issue that crosses parties, Republicans and Democrats, and it has been.
Not to say that they have not disagreed with things, but what you do is you strip this institution of its ability to do its job.
We know that the Supreme Court also said when it comes to the thing called the Merit Systems Protection Board, the National Labor Relations Board, all these things, where the president also stripped those folks, stripped the commissioner of some folks, commission of those participants.
Again, giving him the authority just because he's the president, it's the Constitution and saying go ahead and do it.
the other piece of this once again, shadow docket.
We've got no explanation for it.
And yet, there we are.
There we are once again.
No, it wasn't that commission on this board, the consumer product safety commission, wasn't it split up equally?
It was like Democrats and Republicans, right?
Sure, that's exactly how this is typically done.
Their appointments made to ensure that if there's any concern,
about this being partisan in nature that you've got roughly equal representation.
Exactly.
It's not perfect, of course.
It never is because you've got human beings here.
But again, the concept, which I think, John, you're all over here, is these are people, yes, appointed from those pockets, if you will.
But the question of whether or not a particular toy is safe for toddlers
Is that really something that's on the partisan agenda of one party?
No, it should be everybody, right?
And again, the issues that they deal with are to keep us safe and secure.
The President doesn't like what you do.
You run a file of him.
And also, you're critical of staffing cuts, which is the other part of this.
And the answer is, you're gone.
And that is the United States of America endorsed by our Supreme Court.
that we're living in in 2025, at least three of these so-called independent agencies.
I know you've talked about this as well.
This unified executive theory, this is it in practice.
This is, I am the law.
Again, I'll quote Louis XIV, let's say, moi, I am the law.
I can do whatever I want.
And we're seeing it yesterday once again.
This is not a future problem.
This is here right now.
Just outrageous.
Jim, isn't the Supreme Court supposed to be on vacation now?
Aren't they done?
Give us a break.
Come on.
I will tell you, I teach a class at the local university here.
And they keep saying to me, I thought we had the last of this back in June when you told us about those 67 cases.
And I said, yeah, they're still
Again, showing up for work, which they should.
I think your point, Gordy, is just more that, gosh, can't you just work on your assignments for the fall and put together the term paper that describes what you did over the summertime and come back and do this?
They do not.
And again, it indicates that, again, that's the merit stock.
Now we've just, we're in this situation where routinely, by my count, somewhere approaching, if not beyond 20.
different emergency orders since January.
And we're just going ahead, July, August, September, and then October we start all over again.
This is not typical for what a Supreme Court does.
And again, let the underlying litigation go ahead.
Let the lower courts have the trials and have the appeals.
That's how our system works.
Nope.
Run to the court on an emergency application.
from the Department of Justice, and you will get six members of our Supreme Court who will say, go ahead, do what you want.
Even while the underlying claims by these parties are unresolved, no judgment below.
What more outrage can there be about these kinds of things?
Well, Mark, in a prayer to sack, wants to throw his two cents in with this comment,
the
shadow docket sounds a lot like the courts that are founders in the Declaration of Independence listed as one of the indictments against King George's courts.
Right.
Absolutely.
You look back.
I happened to post some portions of the Declaration of Independence on Independence Day, not identified by many people who are looking at that, but that's Marx exactly right.
You're exactly right.
Noting that one of the concerns was just about doing things.
They didn't use the word transparency.
One of the concerns with King George was, tell us what you're doing.
Do these things in a way that gives us due process and give us a feel that even if the judgment against us is bad, we don't like it.
that we've had our shot in court.
And we know what the judges are doing.
That's a democracy.
And of course, that's not what we had at the starting of this nation as colonies.
That's what we're supposed to have now.
And then again, you think about that hilarious but very sobering portion of Hamilton, where you have that comical King George coming forward and saying, you'll be back and singing that.
You wait and see.
And indeed,
We appear to be if not completely back pretty darn close to being exactly what we had at the time of the Declaration of
Independence It almost seems like the courts of our land don't mean anything at all They can make all the decisions they want and if you get it into the Supreme Court's area they negate
every damn decision these courts are coming up with and they're making sense they're actually reading the Constitution they're telling us why they're making these decisions with even long decisions you know 80 page decisions and yet the Supreme Court does whatever the hell it wants at this point you know we should have been at least
I guess they tip their hand when they got rid of the Chevron decision.
That was one of the major decisions, things that the Republicans did not like for so many decades and where they left departments up to handle what Congress intended to pass as far as laws are concerned for each like the EPA or whatever else, the Department of Education, they intended.
certain things to happen in those departments and the departments had control of that and they got rid of that and then they throw that through the decision into the lower courts to make the decisions for them instead of using expertise, they use the legal system.
to come up with the end
result.
And we use, we use, you don't want me, you don't want Jim Santel deciding major issues about, about engineering and medicine and science and all kinds of things.
I know a very little bit about a thing about this wide or so.
And yet if my gut tells me that there's something wrong with the lower court decision, that's enough.
that too.
It's all a part of this overall.
It is, as you mentioned, Project 2025.
It is chipping away at the confidence that Americans have always had even in an imperfect system.
Nobody looks at this system and says, oh, it's every single day they're doing absolutely the right thing, but we've got the checks and balances.
We no longer have that.
Interestingly, if I can throw another thing out on the table here.
We also had, speaking about those lower court judges, you had a couple of judges also yesterday, big news day in rule of law things.
You had a couple of judges, one in Tennessee, one in Maryland.
We've talked about the Maryland judge before.
This has to do with Kilmer, Amando, Abrego Garcia once again.
He is ordered released.
He is ordered released by a judge named Waverly Crenshaw who says,
government has put a poor attempt together to tie a brago to this gang, MS-13.
He orders him released as he is not a danger to the community.
And then, and that's on the underlying criminal case.
Remember this, he's indicted.
And then he got Judge Zinnis, who's in Maryland.
She is handling the immigration case within minutes, maybe even seconds.
She issues another order and says, oh, by the way, if you are thinking of going and picking him up and deporting him now that he's no longer in custody, don't you dare.
That happened yesterday, within minutes of each other, two different jurisdictions, a Brego Garcia.
And again, it shows what the lower court judges are doing candidly to protect not just a Brego Garcia, but the fundamental notion of how these things should work.
And it's no small thing that it happened again yesterday.
We will see what the government does, Mr. Brego Garcia, plainly in the target.
We also have this outrageous situation.
where the Justice Bretman is saying that if, in fact, he is released, even while he's under indictment, they'll deport him again.
That's the kind of thing that's going on from our time.
So it's just wild.
But we do have lower federal judges, to the extent that they can, who are still saying, you know what, the Constitution means something.
We need to support them candidly and let them know that we are supportive of, if not the substance of the decisions, the method that they pursue in their
work.
All right.
Jim we will take a
break here and stay with us back with more.
Yeah, we'll have more right after this on Johnny Gordy in the morning
WMDX, it's John and Gordy in the
morning.
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Back with Jim Santel.
for a few more minutes.
Yes, we've got a few more topics to cover.
You know, I do have a little summary of what the court has done so far.
They've handed the administration wins on its efforts to shrink the size of the federal government, immigration enforcement.
deportations, scaling back legal protections for transgender people, removing independent government watchdogs, and they're working, of course, on allowing states to gerrymander minority.
areas out of the voting process, essentially.
And what else?
We talked about something yesterday and I'm
sure it was just that that among other things, it looks at the Supreme Court, maybe taking up another possible swing at the Voting Rights Act of the mid-1960s.
It guarantees people of color in this country the right to vote uninhibited also to address language barriers.
It looks as you just said, John, that they're going to be taking up an issue related to whether or not jury mandering is permissible under the Voting Rights Act.
It's a little bit more specific than that.
But we may see yet another.
There have been two in the past.
basically rescinding major portions, sections four and five, and mending section two.
Now we're going back again, maybe, in the next term and saying, let's further restrict this major landmark civil rights litigation, legislation, rather, in the 1960s that protected people come to voting.
Let's take a look at that now.
And again, we'll see what happens in this coming term as
well.
Yeah, it's crazy, because all these other states are thinking about the red states are thinking about redistricting.
Again, right in midterm, in order to gain some advantage in the house.
So we'll see what happens with that.
It's crazy stuff.
The overarching question here, and I always look at the forest for the trees, we've gone so far to the right with this Supreme Court that Democrats had a chance maybe to consider adding more Supreme Court justices to the bench to kind of neutralize this or take this out.
We should have done that.
I mean, it seems like at this point, we should have at least gone out on that limb.
I mean, the Republicans have gone out on that limb.
They've used this court to their advantage.
Why can't we do something as adventurous or as crazy as maybe adding more Supreme Court justices in there to balance this thing out, to stop this plow, this, you know,
incredible system that they are putting in place in this country that doesn't seem to follow the Constitution in any way, shape, or form.
A couple of observations.
One is.
changing the numbers of justices, you don't.
You do not need a constitutional amendment to that.
Check your constitution.
It doesn't tell us how many there need to be.
We know it's been lowest five, FDR proposed going up to 11, 13.
We're at nine because that's where Congress set it up.
So it's through a legislative change.
Now that can be a big hurdle, certainly right now.
But at times in the past, when we've had those opportunities, as you're saying, seizing on it and say, you know what?
nine is a number, 11 is not unwieldy, maybe 23 is too many, then you've got a committee, right?
But addressing that, Joe Biden rightly or wrongly went out and said, I am not in favor of adding more justices.
And here we are.
And we've got nine.
We don't know exactly if one or two of them even retire in the next year.
You still have time in this Congress for a Supreme Court justice.
People look to Clarence Thomas.
People look to Sam Alito and say, gee, maybe they're going to leave to give this president another nomination.
You've got more than a year to do that.
And as we saw with Amy Coney Barrett,
Republicans, when they're in charge and they are right now in charge of the Senate, they can get that done in 13 days if they need to.
And so all kinds of things could happen here, not changing necessarily the ideological composition of the Supreme Court, but changing the people.
And with due respect to age and my own longevity and my own age, replacing some folks who are 60 and 70 with some people around their 40s, knowing that they will remain on the court.
for 40 more years.
That's the advantage of doing these replacements now.
Well, I'm thinking there should be a term limits.
Term limits, yeah.
At least, at least that, right?
And there too, there's some very interesting things proposed by in the United States, send the house.
Again, the Constitution has been interpreted to say no term limits, but there's some language that basically identifies different categories of justices and say, we're not going to kick you off the court.
We're simply going to change what you can do.
Oh, yeah.
That interestingly legislative thing they probably can do.
You've got some very interesting pieces pending there again.
Would that pass in this Congress?
No, but could it pass again in a changed Congress in beginning January of 2027?
with a new house, a new Senate, could you do that kind of thing?
Yes, you could.
And again, would require the signature of a president that will still be Donald Trump, huge burden there, huge hurdle.
But there are remedies to this and people should not be desperate in thinking we are set with the Supreme Court for all time.
The other thing I'll offer is, you know what, for those justices, the three of them who are still out there,
To my perspective, saying the right thing, advocating on behalf of decency and common good and procedure, write them a letter and tell them you know what, they'll never write back.
Kenchy Brown Jackson, I appreciate what you said.
Sonia Sotomayor, thank you for being this voice of reason.
Elena Kagan, good work.
Do that.
Let them know that you're out there supporting them.
Absolutely.
Good ideas.
Jim Santel, we have to leave it there.
Thank you for joining us.
Always a pleasure.
Always a
pleasure.
You
can listen to Jim with his Amicus, a law review on Saturdays, 9 to 11 a.m.
on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Coming up tomorrow, Rocker will be in the studio with a preview of Atwood Fest happening this weekend in Madison Saturday and Sunday.
Huge event.
Also more tickets to give away to Brewers Games.
And Pam Yonkey will join us.
Savannah Tomei Olsen.
I was well.
Jam-packed.
Yep.
Stephanie Miller's next.
Have a great day.
So long.
Have a good time.
Yes.
Despite
everything.
OK.
