You're listening to Civic Media.
You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.
Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime, anywhere.
As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point, a dumbing down.
until humanity was incapable of solving even its most basic problems.
This is grade A weapons grade stupidity.
Just tell you my civic duties.
We can duck and cover.
There's a fall each other right there.
There's no way to survive this, you idiot!
Idiocracy.
For the smartest guy in the world, you're pretty dumb sometimes.
the name on
Brooke.
Have you tried it?
Have you tried that as a filling meal?
I doubt it.
I mean, the internet immediately jumped on those comments, of course, mocking up example after example of what an affordable dinner looks like in Donald Trump's America.
And some of them are pretty funny.
The one with the single red M&M is probably my favorite.
You can see on the screen right there, probably my
Something you could buy in a food desert, probably.
There are a lot of those, but no one ever thought about that.
The Secretary never thought of food deserts.
That's probably why a lot of people eat a lot of the junk food.
That's why the junk food is still something you can buy with snap food stamps.
I mean, that's, that's the problem.
I mean, they can't access really good food and get this.
Now you have a piece of chicken.
You have a piece of broccoli.
A piece of broccoli.
And I don't think I have ever served my kids a corn tortilla.
Just sitting on a plate with nothing in it.
Just there.
Okay.
Nobody would think you could actually have a meal in $3 for $3 in America today.
And I think this is a demonstration of the problem with this entire administration, which is the faux populism.
They speak for working class people while they essentially
RIP SNAP AWAY FOR PEOPLE AT THE SAME TIME THAT
THEY BUILD A
BALL ROOM FOR HIMSELF.
THEY TAKE AWAY HEALTH CARE FROM PEOPLE AND ON THE OTHER SIDE OF IT THEY SAY, OH, BUT YOU CAN APPORT A THREE DOLLAR DINNER.
WHICH, FRANKLY, DOES NOT EXIST REALLY ANYWHERE IN AMERICA.
NOW-
Not even at McDonald's,
I will add.
Maybe you can imagine that if you're a billionaire or you're hanging out with trillionaires.
But in the real life where actual Americans are, people recognize that.
And I think the power of this example is it tells working class people, working people across this country, that this administration has no idea what it's like to struggle with this economy.
Because they are making up stuff for you to argue that actually things are affordable when that could not be further from the truth.
Deserts out there.
They can't really get a lot of this food right and also no one buys one piece of chicken
or one piece of broccoli.
I mean, you're buying quantity, right?
A bag of this, a container of that.
So it's going to cost you a heck of a lot more money than just putting three pieces of something on a plate.
You can't buy food like that.
Oh, it doesn't
Yeah.
Here's one suggestion that came in.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins recommended cash-strapped Americans try eating a nutritious high-fiber baseball How about this?
You know just these are suggestions why not have something else?
Maybe that's that other item that they said you should be on the plate as well to fill you up now I I Have to talk about the food pyramid here because they have really stacked up this food pyramid like
in the opposite direction.
Now you're gonna have to eat a lot of meat, which will cause cancer and fat buildup in your veins and arteries.
It's crazy stuff.
Now, it's good to have all those things, you know, cheese is right up there with meat, and it's great to have that stuff, but you really need the fiber part of it.
You know, and of course we had the food pyramid in a way that stressed a lot of starches.
A lot of noodles, pasta, breads, which, you know, are also not very good.
So we had it all wrong and they made it even more wrong by suggesting just a high protein diet.
What the hell?
Everybody should have it, you know, at least for most of their life until they have to start taking statins.
They put fruits and
Well, good.
It's still there, but it's not quite as prominent.
Yeah, it's a piece of broccoli.
Yeah, it's a piece of broccoli.
That's it.
OK.
All right.
But, you know, I got a follow up story on that.
OK.
And poor Brooke.
Oh, people are picking on her, of course, as you know, you just heard.
Yeah.
And she came out and reacted to it.
This is cut 272 and listen to what Brick Rollins had to say.
just about an hour ago I saw new numbers that were run a full day meaning three full square meals and a snack is about fifteen dollars and sixty four cents fifteen dollars and sixty four cents that's all three meals and
a snack.
So we'll be talking more about that in the coming days and weeks.
Part of me sort of cringed at the criticism that I got because it wasn't what I meant.
And I grew up with a single mom in a really small town and certainly never meant to be flippant.
But I also think that the left or those that were attacking me perhaps know that this is an issue that 90 percent of Americans agree on.
It is one that no one's really done anything about until this administration.
And it is one where we will
will fundamentally, I believe, change the trajectory of our country by changing the health of our country.
I'm really proud of that.
So how are you going to have an affordable dinner?
Good luck.
If you have steak on the plate.
I mean, I can't.
I don't remember the last time I actually bought a steak either.
That's expensive.
Ground beef, I guess, you know, I don't even know how that becomes so inexpensive when all the other beef is very, very expensive.
But anyway, that's the big $3 meal story.
And everybody's going to be talking about for a long period of time now that she has actually come up with a total of $15.64 for three meals a day per person.
Great.
This is being promoted by the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, in fact, all across the state and all across the nation.
Free America Walkout.
encouraging people to walk out of work, out of school, commerce, because Free America begins the moment that we all stop cooperating with fascism.
And that's going on nationwide.
There was a walkout here in Madison as well, Silver Badgers protest, and that may still be going on on the west side of Madison, Gammon Road near Tree Lane.
We got some messages from Ginny.
who helped to get the word out on this.
It's the Silver Badgers.
They're out in the cold there protesting Trump administration treatment of immigrants attempted undermining.
democracy, abuses by immigration, customs, enforcement officers, and the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.
That's going on today.
I
There's a tremendously hopeless feeling in this country right now.
And I can see why everybody's kind of reacting and trying to get out there and say something, do something.
We have very little time left before our break.
So let's go to CJ right now and Stoughton.
What do you got, CJ?
So I think
Thank you.
Let me put this in words you might understand.
Mr. President, go off.
It was
almost as if I were sitting on the same table as you.
But it seems like
No
put the
Brett.
Good one.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
This is Caroline Levitt at her worst or best or whatever, depending on your approach to politics.
She was asked about Renee Good's death, and the reporter...
Simply asked the question and of course then she wanted to kind of turn it around on him and she did but she looked the fool and And this is just so outrageous.
I have to play it.
I know I know it's a little ways back, but
It's just outrageous enough to play it again.
Let's listen.
Earlier you were just defending ICE agents generally and earlier on Secretary Milton spoke to the media and she said among other things that they are doing everything correctly.
32 people died in ICE custody last year.
170 US citizens were detained by ICE and Renee Good was shot in the head and killed by an ICE agent.
How does that equate limb during everything?
Why was Renee Good unfortunately and tragically killed?
You're asking me
my
opinion because an ice age and acted recklessly until the
unjustifier.
Oh, okay So you're a biased reporter with a left-wing opinion.
What do you want me to do?
Yeah, because you're a left-wing hack You're not a reporter you're posing in this room as a journalist and it's so clear by the premise of your question and you and the people in the media who have such biases But fake like you're a journalist you shouldn't even be sitting in that seat But you're pretending like you're a journalist but you're a left-wing activist and the question that you just raised and your answer proves
You should be reporting on the facts.
You should be reporting on the cases.
Do you have the numbers of how many American citizens were killed at the hands of illegal aliens who ICE is trying to remove from this country?
I bet you don't.
I bet you didn't even read up on those stories.
I bet you never even read about Lake and Ryley or Jocelyn Nungray or all of the innocent Americans who were killed at the hands of illegal aliens in this country.
And the brave men and women of ICE are doing everything in their power to remove those heinous individuals and make our communities safer.
And shame on people like you in the media who have a crooked view and have a bias view and pretend like you're a real honest journalist.
So
Tell me again what the other player told you during games.
So the goalkeeper in football, he said the really bad stuff to me and it just made me get really emotional.
I really get emotional and soccer.
And this guy told me I'm a illegal immigrant even though I was born in America.
He said Trump is gonna get me and send me back to where I used to live and I was born in America.
I don't live anywhere else.
And then he called me an effing B-word.
I just don't get why kids like to say those stuff.
It makes me really sad that how they just control their power like that.
They think they have power and it's just not nice.
And this is the kind of poison that we're feeding the kids now.
This is the kind of indoctrination that I guess makes the mages happy out there.
I have a hard time believing that this is what you voted for, okay?
And I'd like to hear more resistance.
to this kind of thinking, this kind of harassment of everybody out there in the country.
Not everybody's gonna agree with you, but you certainly don't have to harass them like that.
And this kid was like, you know, nine or 10 years
Well, good afternoon, guys.
Two little factoids or one factoid.
The only murder soul fire this year in Minneapolis is Renee Good.
And the other interesting point is that we shouldn't be calling those people mega.
That's too too vague.
I think the real term is Trumpansies.
And it would be apt if Disney were to make another sequel of Planet of the Apes with,
know, for the modern era,
know, Planet of the Trumpansies.
Trump has the intelligence level of a chimp, and his followers seem to not be far behind.
That's the
Not used to it.
But we will see.
And there is a way to adjust the size of the lens that I'm looking at in order to read what I need to read.
It doesn't seem to be operating correctly only because you can shrink it or you can expand it.
And I'm trying to shrink it down.
so I can read the whole thing at one glance, but
Okay.
oh
so you could yeah and you could uh you could put the uh designate the speed of that teleprompter i see the writing to go by so you can read it uh there is by the way at the new ces exhibit they had these kinds of
glasses, but you are able to stop and pause and the teleprompter will stop and pause.
No kidding.
Wow.
So it doesn't just keep going.
Yeah, that's pretty cool too.
I'm just curious about these glasses.
Yeah.
Now.
You and I are both glasses wearers, John, but I think I'm more blind than you and Gordy put together.
Yeah.
For those who actually care about their numbers, I'm minus seven.
That's going to shock somebody.
Someone's going
road hearing that.
So you know.
So are your glasses good enough still?
course.
I think Aaron and I would have trouble with my my thick lenses with these
can't wait for you to turn them off for God's sake.
guys, yeah, I just got back from the demo over the Wisconsin River that there's probably you know over 50 people there on the River you know and protesting Trump and for Caroline Levitt for her to spout this nonsense
I looked it up and in 2025 or 2025 there was like 15 People kill you know Americans killed by undocumented people in custody crimes to just you know 15 people that at least documented people killed
Americans, what you're saying, well, there's thousands and thousands of Americans killed by undocumented immigrants.
And that's just absolute nonsense.
There's actually more people killed by ICE and undocumented people killed by undocumented people killed by ICE than there was by, you know, the other way around.
Think of this.
32 people were killed in ICE custody or died in ICE custody.
That's twice as many as Americans supposedly killed by undocumented people.
Yes, there's, you know, I was looking at statistics, you know, there's several thousand crimes committed by over the past five years by undocumented people, but far more crimes been committed by American citizens.
My guess is there's been far more undocumented people killed by American citizens than the other way around.
So she's just lying here.
I mean, it just is galling towards that little cross and, you know, and she's just out not lying and nobody is able to call her on it.
She goes,
on the attack and, you know, MAGA gets a big old, they don't need Viagra anymore because they're here at Carolina and they'll have it speak and that it is just, sorry for the horse voice, but it is just... Well, it's
It's so commonplace on the right wing that they blow these things out of proportion.
If something happens in South Carolina, they blow it up into a national problem.
Just as, you know, people were eating cats and dogs, they blew up.
that into a national problem.
When it wasn't even true and they even admitted that it wasn't true, it still became a national story, a national problem everywhere and people hated immigrants simply because they were eating their pets.
And you know, there were people that didn't care where that story went and how it was disproved and it wasn't true.
They just stuck with the original premise of immigrants eating their dogs and cats.
Yeah.
Crazy stuff.
Okay.
I always forget about prayer to sack is very active.
Oh, yeah,
Now Republicans are pushing a constitutional amendment here in Wisconsin banning DEI in government.
They want this.
in our Constitution.
It's not affirmative action, it's DEI.
And DEI, as I've always said, is a concept, it's a thought.
Now, are there people out there that like to consider themselves thought police?
I guess so.
But they complain about thought police and here they are, they're trying to control our thoughts.
Now, Democrats are saying,
This about DEI.
They're basically saying that it's a it's a repackaging of bigoted racist comments.
They want to keep the status quo in place.
They want systemic racism to continue, not be weeded out over time.
And I think we were doing a damn good job of that.
But but now with this addition of DEI.
Instead of affirmative action, they picked a different word, different meaning, three different words, by the way, that are just regular words, right?
Diversity, equity, and inclusion.
So I mean, they mean separate things.
If you put them together, does that make it illegal or bad?
I don't know.
Drama queen assembly speaker Robin Voss said this.
He has described DEI as cancerous.
See, this is all part of the propaganda.
DEI is now applied to everything as you might have already seen and heard or read about.
And it's in the eye of the beholder.
That's what we found out from the Megas.
They elect to pick this, that and the other thing and then blame DEI on it.
Get this, this is State Representative David Murphy, a Republican, he actually said this, need-based programs would then be available to minorities, but they would also be available to white people.
That is, you know, you can't hide it.
You can't hide the racism just dripping from that comment, right?
The proposed state constitutional amendment targets public education where diversity is needed.
Research consistently shows significant educational benefits for students when taught by minority teachers in minority schools, leaning to higher test scores and better attendance.
So why get rid of that?
why not try to get more minority teachers into the minority schools, right?
I mean that would make sense and they'd get a better education.
But of course that goes away.
And it also applies to public contracting in the private sector telling businesses what they can or cannot do.
Now we've seen that over and over again.
Here's an example, legal challenges led organizations like the American Association of University Women.
to
They would fund women's businesses, but they can't now.
They've been challenged by the administration.
They have no business challenging them, by the way.
So you say, well, what is happening with this?
Numerous lawsuits have been filed.
which is good news, right?
By the NEA, the ACLU and the National Urban League and others, federal courts have blocked enforcement of some of these rules and regulations in states throughout the country, finding the plaintiffs likely to succeed with their claims.
So there is hope that this kind of works out in the end.
But I think it's really, you know, it's a game of words.
I mean, you replace what?
affirmative action with DEI.
And then everybody goes to something a little bit different, right?
Something like talent management or cultural groups.
You can add that instead.
See, we just keep going on and on and on.
This is like whack-a-mole,
She said, it eliminates programs that prevent discrimination.
Aha.
I think this is a message that the Democrats should definitely pick up on.
And she says it limits our ability to govern based on the data that is presented to us, like minority owned, women owned and service disabled veteran owned businesses to provide better opportunities for them.
That goes out the door as well with DEI in our state constitution.
So it isn't really cancerous at all.
It's kind of a big benefit to everybody.
And again, these are three, three just normal everyday words.
And it's a concept.
And by the way, it's also a First Amendment right.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
It went really well.
It was it was cold today, but we were all dressed normally
were 70 people that showed up on that corner.
lot
Yeah, and we had one of us, uh, did happen to count the number of cars that tutored at us was 307 cars today.
That's a lot.
That's a bunch and they corner.
Yeah.
And it was, uh, it was good.
It was, is a, is a very great group.
You know, the one of the things about this, uh, silver badgers were members of, um, we started this because it was really difficult for people to get downtown.
Uh, because what we, where we live, it's, um,
as senior housing basically apartment housing on on what's called this to west and We have all people have mobility issues.
They're older We have we have people the only that are a hundred years old and 99 years old that are constantly Being a part of this but they weren't today that it was too cold for them But we still some of the rest of us got out there and there were like I said, there were 70 folks that were on the on
Well,
Today was for Walking Out America, which was a national protest.
Saturday protest rally will be, we're standing with Minnesota and for good.
place Saturday the 27th act two o'clock on Gammon Road Opposite Memorial High School and that meets up with Tree Lane There are four corners there and we usually have people at all four corners.
There's lots of free parking The land is flat
no steps.
That's why we do it there.
So we attract a lot of people in the neighborhood, and from around the rest of Madison, who don't want to go downtown, and have to deal with large crowds.
And also mobility issues.
A lot of us have, our older have wheelchairs or walkers, so it's a great location for us.
What if what is the oh 24th that would be on Friday?
Let me look for sure.
want to learn.
ahead.
You want to learn more about us if you want to learn more about us check out the Facebook page There is also an interview that we did a while ago at the Monaco tap
Uh, on the east side of Madison.
right.
Again, they do have a Facebook page and you can find out more information there.
And good for them for taking the initiative to do that and, you know, understand, you know, it's a, when you get up there in years, we're looking at each other here, it's a little bit difficult sometimes to get downtown.
And so they just decided to start their own group out on the West side and make it a little bit easier to get their whole group together.
Bus rapid transit and their double buses and they're huge and they accommodate wheelchairs and and people who have a difficult time getting around but in this case, you know It's better local especially in the west side of Madison.
This is a good spot to be I wonder for any students stop by I mean this is right across from Memorial High School,
I would imagine so of course they they as they as they mentioned today's
protest was about the Free America walkout, which is a nationwide effort, walking away from fascism and walking toward a free America.
And that happened statewide for people that were wanting to get out there and show their support for freedom.
I want to talk about the Trump
panzees suggestion.
Okay.
Because, uh, you know, I was thinking Trump pansies.
Well, you know, maybe somebody will make a, uh, see, uh, well, AI movie of this or maybe a little, uh, clip of it somewhere along the way.
You know, Trump pansies, uh, they follow them pretty religiously here.
But I was also thinking, you know, they're old.
chimpanzee TV shows that we used to watch in the 60s and 70s all
there was one the Hathaways which I don't remember piggy castin and Jack Weston but the one that everybody kind of talks about to this day and something you should have to see on YouTube it's Lancelot link
secret chimp.
And that ran from 1970 to 71.
It was bizarre.
Yeah, they just used the moving lips of chimpanzees and put a
The national news cycle never stops, but it can be hard to find news about your local community.
Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.
With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.
Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.