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for
And we're supposed to take their word that these are drug smugglers, which no one is going to believe anymore I mean look how they lie about the protesters and the confrontations that they're having with them even judges in this country no longer believe the administration when they claim well they're being harassed and doxxed and
There's no proof of it.
There's nothing out there that can prove their point, and the judges are catching on to this, except for the Supreme Court.
They love rolling over for the president.
I know, I know.
This was just a ceasefire.
This wasn't a peace.
And that's why he didn't deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, no matter how many
plaques he gets, no matter how many framed commitments from other world leaders that he should get the peace prize.
I've never seen anything so stupid.
It's what's going on now, trying to appease this orange muffin that we have in the White House.
And the
shutdown.
just some but here's the here's the big story and I got this from I don't know how I managed to get on the email list but this is from Liz lens and her email letter is called men yell at me
Okay.
I don't know how I got on this thing.
Maybe I was in a more women's movement at the time.
I don't know.
Just a mood.
But anyway, she's had some interesting, fun stuff to talk about.
And she talked about the way Portland is dealing with ice.
And sometimes she says the best way to counteract a false narrative is to put on a frog costume, get out in the street and dance.
What?
Really?
That's what it's all about.
Why not?
Get out there and dance.
A video on X of a dinosaur, unicorn, raccoon, and bear dancing to a hit song was posted with the caption, let's check in on the war zone in Portland.
Even Fox News had had a problem addressing this issue.
They noted that bear asked bikers were driving through the rain as part of the protest.
So I changed that, right?
And then they had the naked.
Uh, protest as well.
You
know,
she was
Well, we'll send a letter to George Soros.
He's funding all this right here.
One of the frog clad protesters told a reporter, I'm out here protesting in a frog costume, especially in a frog costume to show how ridiculous the notion that we are
violent terrorists is, as one user said, this is a wildly effective form of protest because there is no way you can claim the unicorn-suited person twerking is a violent revolutionary who needs to be pepper sprayed, without looking insane, of course.
The ridiculous contrast between propaganda and reality is harder to ignore.
when animal costumes are involved.
And I think
that is a
What do you
I got my Guy Falks mask on.
I'll be weird.
That I'll be on the bridge there across the Wisconsin River and soxies.
I think last year we had the last time There's 400 people there on the bridge.
Yeah.
Oh
I thought it was only 200, but I heard it was more than that.
Yeah That's the place to do
Yeah a reference for v-front for friend data is a revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having Oh really
that's a well it's made by somebody.
I think it was um
A different woman had made that comment during World War II against Hitler.
Wow.
Okay.
I guess fascist maybe was in Italy.
Well, it's
But it was comforting yesterday in some aspects that Malcolm Nance was on Stephanie Miller and he described Kristi Nome once again as a puppy killer.
And he says, every time you reference her, you just got to call her a puppy killer.
And that's kind of what I've been doing because I'm a big dog fan and
Yeah, that's just nothing you brag about.
I mean that it is just nothing you do and nothing you brag about and that's sick
supposed to have deleted here
mean the fact is
And I don't think we've ever seen any division she's in charge of.
I don't think we've ever seen the head of that organization heading out and going to all the sites where they're having operations.
I mean, I just, the whole cosplay element of this is just twisted.
It's possible.
It's possible.
Yeah.
I got another little addition here.
George Soros funded No Kings Day.
All right.
More cliches to come here.
Really?
Terrence Williams, a comedian and founder of Cousins Tea, which I have no idea what that is, wrote this about his beloved orange babbling blob.
Oh, really?
The
blob?
is Terrence William He's a conservative and this is what he wrote 10 million protesters Let's be honest the people planning.
There's no King's protest on October 18th aren't exactly the backbone of America These are the same get this here.
We got all the cliches coming up.
These are the same jobless woke
Lazy, attention-hungry activists who spend more time shouting in the streets than working to make this country better.
Okay.
What about all the people that showed up for these rallies?
Are they jobless?
Are they attention-hungry activists?
I think so.
Hell, they warped diapers to support Trump.
My God, he also writes here, now they're promising 10 million protesters across the nation and all to oppose Donald Trump.
His supporters and anyone who believes in law, order and ice.
Who knew that those were the high points?
Law, order and ice.
Thank you very much.
He says, they call it no kings, but it's really just another anti-Trump tantrum disguised as a movement.
In my opinion, this is another Soros funded stunt designed to divide the country and demonize hardworking Americans who still love their country.
No, we love our country so much, we want to save it from a dictatorship,
from
He also writes, they hate Trump because he exposed how fake
their power really is.
They don't want freedom.
They want control.
And that's why, God, this is so much projection.
And that's why real Americans are standing stronger than ever.
Oh, by the way, I just want to throw in here the Terrence Williams.
He's a comedian, doesn't sound very funny.
And he also has a new children's book.
It's called The Little Kid Who Can.
Okay.
You know, I got to, you know, it's odd though, right?
Didn't Cash Patel have children sports too?
I think so, yeah.
What is this preoccupation with children?
Well, right?
It's always, you know, we got to save the children, uh, uh, child groomers.
Everything is child related.
We got to save the children on the schools.
We
We'll get to that.
Phone lines are open.
608-879-8255.
We'll be back with more of John and Gordy for this Thursday morning.
And also joining us about 15 minutes, Jim Santel, former U.S.
attorney at law.
We'll check out what's happening at the Supreme Court and other legal matters here on WMDX.
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They've welcomed him back and he's rejoined.
He's with the new tour.
It's 723 cloudy skies, some scattered showers today off and on and highs in the mid sixties right now 53 degrees.
And don't forget Madison Night Market.
The last one of the season takes place tonight begins at five o'clock goes until nine o'clock.
So you might
Just a reminder, Michael McDonald appeared on every recorded song in history.
And we're tired of his voice.
In the 70s.
We can't stand it.
God.
And Dave Thomas on Second City TV did a great impression.
Oh, God, that was so funny.
It's good stuff.
Yeah.
Uh, okay.
Let's get to, uh, Corellidville, uh, or, or as I like to call her, Pam Bondi.
Um, anyway, she's come out, you know, she's coming out swinging against Antifa.
She's going
to take
which
Well, sure.
And that's one of the things about Antifa.
You've heard President Trump say multiple times they are organized.
They are a criminal organization.
No, they're not.
And they're very organized.
You're seeing people out there with thousands of signs that all match pre-bought.
Pre-put together.
They're organized and someone is funding it.
We're going to get to the funding of Antifa.
We're going to get to the root of Antifa.
Could you find that?
And we are going to find and charge all of those people who are causing this chaos in Portland and all these other cities across our country.
Talk to all the influencers who have been threatened and beat up and their lives threatened from Antifa members.
It's going to stop under Donald Trump.
We saw January 6th that happened as much as they like to deny it and just say it was just a vacation trip for most of them.
Right.
It wasn't.
Now, you know, the big thing that hit the fan, I thought, more than anything really exemplifies the future of the Republican Party.
Now, we know that Charlie Kirk liked to go to those colleges and influence those young lines out there.
We know that Scott Walker also does the same exact thing.
They love the kids.
Just to influence them, propaganda works real well on these young, moldable minds.
Well, anyway, political obtained months of exchanges from a telegram conversation between the leaders and members of the Young Republican National Federation and some of its affiliates in New York, Kansas, Arizona, and Vermont.
The chat included racist language, jokes about rape,
and flipping commentary on gas chambers.
So this is the direction of the young Republican party.
We thought Gen Z, there was some kind of hope.
Well, there's a section of that that isn't very hopeful.
But you know what, J.D.
Vance came out and he had to say something about that.
Obviously, you know, he certainly doesn't like to have something like this happen on his watch, but...
Yes, he did defend them.
Let's listen to cut 139.
This is mind boggling.
If you can imagine, just go for it.
Let's listen
by focusing on what kids are saying in a group chat.
Grow up.
I'm sorry.
Focus on the real issues.
Don't focus on what kids say in group chats.
But there's another angle to this that I just have to be honest about.
Yeah, I'm like an old guy.
You're
years old.
I have three kids.
You know, we I grew up in a different world, right?
We're not most of what I the stupid things that I did when I was a teenager and a young
adult, they're not on the internet.
Like I'm going to tell my kids, especially my boys, don't put things on the internet.
Like be careful with what you post.
If you put something in a group chat, assume that some scumbag is going to leak it in an effort to try to cause you harm or cause your family.
Scumbag.
But the reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys.
They tell edgy, offensive jokes.
Like that's what kids do.
And I really don't want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid
joke, telling a very offensive stupid joke, is caused to ruin their lives.
And at some point, we're all going to have to say, enough of this BS.
We're not going to allow the worst moment in a 21-year-old's group chat to ruin a kid's life for the rest of time.
That's just not OK.
We live in a digital world.
This stuff is now etched in stone online.
We're all going to have to say, you know what?
No, no, no, we're not doing this.
We're not canceling kids because they do something stupid in a group chat.
And if I have to be the person who carries that message forward, I'm fine with.
to the vice president?
Let's
celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out in hell.
Call their employer.
We don't believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.
Oh, I see.
And there is
no civility in the celebration of political assassination.
Get involved.
that they
it
do you got, Charles?
I will.
Good morning, guys.
You know, these, I hate to say it, but these idiots like Pam Bondi, when she's talking about these signs that people are all getting the look of life.
She ever looked at a Trump rally?
And they tell on themselves, they're so stupid.
They allow Trump to send them out there looking like idiots.
Well, real quickly,
to me this is like back to the future the movie only the movie was pretty entertaining for this is they're trying to take us back to pre-civil war from what i see of this yeah in other words we're once white people become the minority race which is what they claim within 15 years or something like that they want to make sure that well we're still in control of everything
point that's
thank you for
you know, quoting Martin Luther King Jr.
You know, not the color of their skin, but their character.
Here's the thing that was aspirational.
It wasn't declaring an end.
to all of that, which is what Republicans are claiming.
Well, he just left that behind.
No, it's aspirational.
We're not there yet.
We're way not there yet.
And we're going to talk about all of that right now with Jim Santel, because the Supreme Court is taking this issue up about the Voting Rights Act.
What do you got for us, Jim?
The latest on this.
Morning, Jim.
So good morning.
Good to be with you gentlemen on a morning in the wake of
Another very concerning oral argument, yesterday morning, this is among the about 30 or so cases before the Supreme Court on stock at right now.
Case for listeners, the name of the case is Calais, C-A-L-L-A-I-S.
I mentioned at the top because this could be one of those names that rings in American history for a long period of time.
Put the headline out there and then talk about the details.
This is one in which if the Supreme Court decides to swing broadly at this, this could be the third strike to bring the voting rights.
act of 1965 to its knees.
There's a portion of it called section two.
It's the key provision basically says we do not discriminate in voting.
We do not engage in biased or prohibitions in voting people of color, people of language, no poll taxes, no literacy taxes, all the things that otherwise would stop people from voting.
And so that's the basic notion.
60 years of tradition under this enforcing that
ensuring that people of color, all people, all people have access to the franchise.
And we have in Louisiana, as we have in Wisconsin, in every state in the wake of the 2020 census, gut line drawing for congressional seats.
Initially, the legislature draws one majority black district there out of about 30% of the population.
The long history here, one of the courts comes back and says, well, in a voting rights act,
You need to have two majority black districts.
The legislature does that.
That gets challenged then, that is having two majority black districts in Louisiana by a group that describes themselves as non-African Americans.
And they say that by doing that, by doing that, you're violating the 14th and 15th amendments, voting and equal protection.
And basically they're setting up a dispute, if you will, between
the prohibitions, the guarantees of the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution, whether or not the Voting Rights Act for all these years has been unconstitutional and therefore needs to be stricken down.
Supreme Court can do a number of different things.
They can make a very narrow decision on whether or not these two districts are properly drawn.
They can send it back to the legislature to do more work on it, all kinds of things, or, and this is the spectrum.
I think that's the reason why
gentlemen, you and your listeners want to talk about this morning, as things said during the oral argument that indicate that the Supreme Court may well be going big on this.
And by that, I don't mean good on this.
I simply mean that this might be the third strike, a couple of previous cases that impinged the capacity to invoke the Voting Rights Act.
This might be the third one.
Maybe, maybe we'll find out in June, finding the section two is unconstitutional.
If it is, it basically means that the notion
of doing redistricting and line drawing based upon race to ensure that all people, including people of color, have access to the polls, that will no longer be a mandate and that will no longer be required opening up the door to wild candidly or unfettered drawing of lines, maybe even based on race to ensure that people are not given the franchise in the way that they should.
Absolutely.
And what that Congress
This looks like in particular, because if indeed you can go ahead and you can draw lines in a way that are intended to disenfranchise, and by that I mean basically make it impossible for people of color to send people to Congress who are also of color, also their views in terms of representation.
If you do that, then you can draw lines that will establish a variety of white majority populations.
and you're reducing the numbers, you're also politicizing this, there's a whole another aspect of this related to political gerrymandering and that's wound up in this as well in ways that the argument yesterday revealed.
The upshot is gives a lot of legislators around the country the capacity to redraw lines in ways that disenfranchise and also ensure that
that, frankly, Republicans have a much stronger majority than what they have right now.
And the other aspect of this that's
that I think all your listeners, you know about this already, but we've got Brett Kavanaugh, who has, again, gone on, he's been out front on this as has the Chief Justice and others, and basically seizing on what the Chief Justice has said in a long prior case called Shelby County, that was the one in which they said pre-clearance provisions are no longer part of the voting rights act.
and bemoaning the fact that it's been a long time.
He says, 60 years.
He says, we've had a lot of court cases, many contexts, race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time, sometimes long periods, but they should not be indefinite.
And they should have an end.
And he asks yesterday, what exactly do you think the endpoint should be or how we would know for the intentional use of race to create districts?
Basically he's saying,
60 years is enough and we've had enough focus on race when it comes to these kinds of issues, need to bring it to an end and move on.
That is a stunning thing for the Supreme Court shots of the guy.
I mean, you know, I can see somebody who doesn't have a clue, maybe a young person, 18, 19 years old would ask that question.
He's a grown-up.
He understands the situation.
When there are a lot of court cases going to the Supreme Court in regards to just this whole effort, it's still an issue.
It's still out there.
You can't make that kind of statement.
It's not true,
Right.
And we've seen it.
We talked about on this show not too long ago.
This is a continuing theme of this Supreme Court.
Recall the case involving the universities and the options that universities used to have in considering race among one of many considerations for the entrance of people into their college classes.
We know well that both in the private and the public sector, the Supreme Court has said
that you cannot use race when it comes to populating your incoming class.
You can do it maybe subtly through some statements that applicants may make, but you can't do that.
Again, why?
Because, well, we're beyond that now.
And we should just be looking.
And again, to your very good point, Sean, at the outset, you're talking about invoking Dr. Martin Luther King, quality of your character.
Let's look at that.
Let's not look at skin color anymore.
This is a continuing theme, and it is one that, again, your listeners should know about.
Hold on, come June.
This is, I think, going to be the most significant opinion of this term.
And I don't think it's hyperbole to say, although all of them are in the running right now for the most important in recent years, this can change dramatically the way in which America lives and works and breathes.
So
Her name is Susan Ilston, I-L-L-S-T-O-N.
And she's got before her a challenge from some unions.
And to this notion that the president's going to lay off about 4,100 federal workers during the government shutdown.
And along the way, she is entertaining
argument from them about the effects of this.
And she is saying basically that we're mixing not apples and oranges, my words, not hers.
But she says, you know, government shutdown basically means we don't have a budget.
And to the extent that the government is still working today, it's on fumes.
We've got accepted employees who've got employees who are in these special categories.
At some point, the checks are going to stop coming fairly soon.
But she says the notion of firing people
is apart from this notion of a shutdown, which is about budget.
And she says that the administration, these are her words, has taken advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning, to assume that all bets are off and the laws don't apply to them anymore.
She says that plan law and layoffs are impermissible because they are, here we go again, politically motivated.
pointed to some statements during the course of this evidentiary hearing by the president himself that officials then and he White House targeting what he calls it once again he uses the word Democrat not Democratic but Democrat targeting programs and agencies favored by Democrats she says the politics that infuses what's going on is being trumpeted out loud in this case that's impermissible
That's the motive for laying off 4,100 federal workers.
And she enters a prelim, what's called a preliminary injunction, temporary restraining order.
It's in effect, bars the administration from now, removing ahead with these layoffs from members of the unions who appeared in front of her that sued under their case.
Is this going to go up to the Court of Appeals?
Yes, it will.
The Ninth Circuit probably will affirm her.
Maybe eventually goes up to the Supreme Court.
This could be another emergency docket.
other shadow docket case we don't know.
But at least as of today, as of this morning, as of yesterday, in California, can't lay off, again, based upon what the judges said, can't proceed with the president's plan to lay off workers because of this.
I get it.
It's somewhat related.
But because you don't have a budget, there's not a budget for anybody.
People are
getting
That's borrowed money, if you will.
Yeah, be outraged about this in the past.
Yeah, I've said on this show, do your job Congress at least thing we can expect all of them to do Democrats and Republicans.
We don't have a budget right now for the most important biggest country in the face of the planet, which is stunning.
It is stunning.
But it's also doesn't mean you lay off people who would otherwise be funded if you did your job.
And that's the difference that she's calling to our attention.
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All right.
I don't know why I said that.
All right, well, anyway, getting back to the issues at hand here, we were talking last break about...
the Voting Rights Act and how this could add 14, 15, 16, 17 new Republicans to Congress.
But also they of course are redoing their districts within a 10 year period which I think seems like it's unconstitutional.
I'm asking you Jim, is it constitutional or how are they able to get away with drawing new border lines?
Within a 10-year period, the Constitution is pretty clear on this, isn't it?
So what the Constitution says is James Madison stuff and contemplated that, absolutely, and said that every 10 years going to take a nationwide census.
And the idea was, we're going to redraw our lines in the wake of that.
What has happened here is there's an anticipation that after that period of time states, including Wisconsin, will do that fairly expeditiously.
The new thing that you're bemoaning this morning appropriately is that now we no longer have those kinds of deadlines and those patterns because now we've got things in Texas.
For example, maybe California, where, again, mid-decade, we're now revisiting that.
There's nothing necessarily unconstitutional about it, but it's not what was contemplated.
The idea is put things in place for 10 years, give people some solidity about what those districts look like, and then do it again in 10 years.
The problem that you're identifying here is when we do it right now, whether in the wake of this Calais case in the coming years, or if we're doing this based upon what Texas
This is doing California, other states, Missouri, Indiana, maybe.
What you're doing then is you're sort of upsetting that pattern.
It was the constitutional design.
You get these things in place, provide certainty about what the future brings.
And again, like everything else, kind of all bets are off.
And you file lawsuits now, we go down this road and we've got
disruption in the certainty of what these districts look like.
Oh, now I want to ask you about this.
What we're seeing here is a dramatic difference between the federal courts, all the state courts, and the Supreme Court.
Is anybody going to point that out ever?
That they seem to have a completely different interpretation of law and an agenda as opposed to all the federal courts, all the state courts, and the Supreme Courts of every other state.
There seems to be, they're on a different page.
You're absolutely right.
The positive way to look at that is to say, you know, we've got this idea called federalism.
that contemplates that we would have different systems out there.
The concern that I think you're underscoring once again is consistency in basic principles.
There's a thing called the supremacy clause that says that the federal government, the laws that the federal government passes in our federal system, they're still the ones that take precedence over the state, but the states also have obligations.
And the result of this is
that we do get state court judges, we get appeals court judges at the state court level that are issuing orders that are not always consistent with what's going on the federal courts.
The idea of our Constitution is that ultimately the Supreme Court would resolve all of these disputes.
That, again, is problematic at a time when the Supreme Court, from my perspective, and I suspect of many of your listeners, is pursuing things from a
a very jaded perspective that is giving the president huge amounts of power and otherwise doing things, voting rights act otherwise that are contrary to the best interests of the nation and the states.
That's the very convoluted, wonky, lots going on there, kind of a response to that.
And I think a lot of people should pay more attention to what the federal courts are saying, their decisions, because they're actually making the argument they're looking at the Constitution.
They're the ones explaining why they have decided what they're deciding.
And when we have a docket that doesn't have to explain anything, something is terribly wrong with this system, at least at the Supreme Court level.
and
It gets to the Supreme Court and we get one sentence orders without explanation, without oral argument of the sort that we talked about just a few moments ago, and changing the ways in which the government works, the country works without explanation.
And it gets fascinating that the lower court judges are the ones who should be, regardless of how you feel about their decisions, they're the ones who are writing the orders that explain what they're doing.
The Supreme Court is not.
And that's the concern.
That's the profound concern.
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