Wisconsin from Civic Media.
This is UpNorth News Radio.
Now, live from our Lake Wissota studio, here's the founding editor of UpNorth News, Pat Breidler.
On a bashedly Wisconsin and brought to you by Courier Newsroom, this is UpNorth News Radio, live from Lake Wissota across the Chippewa, across the Civic Media radio network.
Here live from Chippewa Falls, it's election day.
I'm discombobulated.
It's a new month.
It's April 1st already.
The polls are open across Wisconsin and will be until eight o'clock tonight.
Get out and vote.
If you've already voted and you voted early, then you've got the same job that I do.
Go pester people.
Get them to vote.
Explain to them the importance of getting out there and if people want to know, well, what else is on their ballot?
Where do they vote?
Do they find out if they're registered?
Go to myvote.wi.gov and learn all about it.
Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez is standing by.
We're going to talk to her about the importance of voting today.
What are the stakes and what else she is working on during a busy legislative and budget session.
We will talk to Deborah Cronmiller from the League of Women Voters about the constitutional amendment that's on the statewide ballot today as well.
And of course meteorologist Brittany Merlot will have the details on our forecast, including another storm moving into the state later today.
and into tomorrow.
But first, it is time for the Civic Media break into spring statewide text to win contest.
It all starts with the Civic Media app.
You can use that to go to one of the stations, select the text of the station, and then use that little text button to send us just a keyword.
That's all your texting is one word four times a day at 7am, 11am, 1pm and 4pm.
Each word or each hour has a different word and you have till the end of the hour to text it to us.
You'll be in the running for an hourly prize and then the grand prize which is a Queen mattress set from Verlo.
Complete rules at civicmedia.us.
All right, let's get to today's break into spring statewide keyword this hour.
And this is to win $100 cash is this hour's prize and the word is pillow.
P-I-L-L-O-W.
Pillow is the text to win word.
Use the Civic Media app and let's make a winner out of you.
Somebody's gonna get a hundred bucks this hour.
May as well be you.
Here's meteorologist Brittany Merleau now to tell us whether we're gonna be winners or losers with this forecast here.
Sad Trombone's about to play I
think.
I wish this was like an April Fool's joke and none of this was true, but...
Can you imagine that happening where all the weather people all get together and say, predict bad weather, all these bad maps, and then on that morning they're like, surprise, it's gonna be gorgeous out.
In other news, chaos rains down all over the United States.
Right?
Although, hey.
Maybe, maybe after they cut out, you know, the entire National Weather Service and we turn it over to the private sector, maybe that's where we go is, hey, we got to gin up the ratings.
We're going to do a, we're going to do April Fool's weather.
Okay.
Now that we've depressed ourselves with that, let's, let's get to what the trained weather people can do for us.
And that is tell us the factual forecast, which ain't that great.
But again, these, there's going to be fewer and fewer snowflake opportunities as we move forward here.
Yes, actually, this is the last time I see snow in the forecast for at least the next couple of weeks.
So to me, that means our temperatures are going to be warming up and maybe this is the last blast.
So fingers crossed for that.
Right now, though, it is cold up northeast in Eagle River.
It is in the single digits there.
Meanwhile, down in Racine this morning, it is 34 degrees.
We've got clear skies across the entire state, but those clouds will be thickening and moving in as we go through this day with rain arriving in the southwestern parts.
of the state probably around six o'clock this evening.
That is going to spread throughout the state, turns to snow around eight o'clock as it moves into central areas, and it continues to lift into the north woods as well.
High temperatures today up northeast will be in the upper thirties and down southwest.
You're going to be in the low forties for highs today.
Now this is going to continue to accumulate as we go through the evening where a winter weather advisory has been issued pretty much from Watoma to Shawno.
all the way north and then there's winter storm warning into Douglas and Bayfield counties.
Now up north by Lake Superior in the winter storm warning they're looking at a half of a foot to about a foot of snowfall hitting them.
For the winter weather advisory areas for a lot of northern Wisconsin we're looking at a good three to five inches.
as some places from Wausau to about Rhinelander could see a little bit more, maybe around six or seven inches or so.
But otherwise, this storm is kind of messy.
What it's going to be doing is first moving in as a potentially a wintry mix into our southern areas.
It'll be all snow for the north.
That'll start to accumulate.
It'll be all rain to the south as we go through this evening, but then tomorrow morning, the system starts to lift, warms everything up, and we're going to see a wintry mix lifting through the north woods and then turning to all rain as we go through the day tomorrow.
So, snow, ice, rain, melt.
It's going to be a mess out there.
Mud everywhere.
Ew.
Yeah,
I did not ask for mud in the forecast here.
It's I found something better than the than the horn.
Oh, God, please.
No, no, no.
OK, we know.
Now we have Greg's official reaction to the forecast from Rob.
Good morning from Tigerton.
Clear skies at 19 degrees yesterday coming home from work.
I found a power line down in my yard taken down by a tree branch.
I will have a huge cleanup job ahead.
He said last night I went to Sean.
Oh, I got to see Kristen Lyrely at one of her meetings and it was very informative.
He says the senior is beautiful with the ice on the trees and I'm heading to the town of Germania town hall to vote.
everybody get out and vote he says no repeat of April 2018 please with three feet of snow and of course he's looking forward to mowing season because once you're done making money on the plowing you got to make it on the mowing you know oh
so
you know that's you know that's how you wrap up a weather
report I love this
little imagery about that
and brewers victories fresh cut grass and brewers victories that's what I need coming soon
Boy,
we'll have to turn that
ship around, won't we?
All right, well, one can dream.
Brittany, thank you so much.
Have a wonderful day.
You too.
All right, the the Brewers did drop their home opener 11 to 1 to go to 0 and 4 on the season, but I'll try it again tonight.
Brewers versus Kansas City coverage starts at 605 on Civic Media stations in Richland Center, Oshkosh, Racine Kenosha, Park Falls, and Hayward head to civicmedia.us to learn more.
Let's bring in Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez now on this election day morning.
Polls have been open for about 13 minutes now open until 8 p.m.
Lieutenant Governor Rodriguez.
Good morning.
How are you?
Good morning.
I'm
So nice to see you.
Thank you for joining us once again and talking about, you know, what's at stake in this election and we'll get to some of the other business you're taking care of as well.
But again, we will not get and I can never believe this is true, but it's true.
We're never going to get 100% voter turnout.
But that means there's always somebody we can talk to right now who might not be voting today, might be on the fence, may or may not make time for it.
So when you're talking to those folks who just
Honestly, don't know if they're going to go vote today or not.
What do you tell them to make them think?
You know, this actually is worth it.
I do need to go vote.
One of these nonpartisan elections, we don't have a huge turnout for some of these.
And they're so, so important for particulars, our Wisconsin Supreme Court.
This is going to make some decisions moving forward.
Are we going to have a Supreme Court that's a rubber stamp for Donald Trump?
Or are we going to have a Supreme Court that's going to effectively apply the law impartially?
And that's what people really need to ask themselves what they want to be able to do for the next several years.
here in Wisconsin.
Do we want the Wisconsin state government to look like the chaos that's, you know, in the federal government right now?
I certainly don't want that.
We've got, you know, Brad Schimmel, who's saying that he is going to be a partner to Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
And that it really honestly is scary to me.
So people have got to get out there to vote.
They've got to make sure that they're looking at what's on their ballot because there's so many other things that are on there.
There's the state superintendent race.
You likely have to be voting for your local school board.
We know how important those are right now.
And there's judges that you need to be looking at for your local area about who you want to make sure that is going to be, again, applying that law fairly.
I have an 18 year old son.
He voted for the first time in February and I have been bugging his friends about how important this election is and making sure that they're going to vote as well.
Yeah, we definitely need that next generation of voters out there.
And it starts to get them in the habit early that it's not just the presidential elections that every one of these matters.
And I want to pick up on something we talked about yesterday with Brad Schimble's candidacy and this whole notion of him saying that, you know, the job isn't done talking about Donald Trump's election and that Donald Trump needs a support network that's out there and he meant in the courts.
And I mean, look, everybody, you can tell which way their political leanings might be when they run for something.
But to be this vocal about Trump and being a supportive network and everything sure seems to cross the line as to whether any case involving Trump or Elon Musk could be looked at fairly by him.
It's absolutely true.
I mean, that's very scary to me that he is this partisan and basically saying he is going to be supporting Elon Musk.
He is going to be supporting Donald Trump.
He's been very, very clear on that.
Elon Musk has poured money into this race.
So much money.
I mean, you saw that he did giveaways of millions of dollars for people who voted.
Look, I'm a nurse.
I'm not a lawyer.
We will let the courts figure that out, but that certainly seems like you are purchasing votes.
And that I just, you know, Wisconsin's not for sale.
And that's what we need to make sure that people know about as we're going forward.
The other thing I'd be remiss if I didn't say, because I am a nurse, is that once again, abortion rights are on the line.
And Brett Schimmel has said that he finds nothing wrong with our 1849 abortion law, which again, has no exceptions for rape, incest, or health of the mother.
Only life of the mother.
very very dangerous for Wisconsin and we want to make sure that we've got folks who are going to look at the laws that we haven't applied them fairly.
Yeah I mean there's a level of extremism that obviously is only being telegraphed and not said explicitly but through the endorsements and through his sayings about the 1849 law certainly make it clear why
That issue alone would be enough, if not the billionaire dollars, if not everything else that's on the ballot here.
We're talking to Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez about Election Day and about getting out to vote.
The polls are open until eight o'clock.
We're going to continue the conversation in just a moment, but just ahead of the break, I will tell you again, yes, the the Brewers were losers to Kansas City in the home opener 11 to 1.
The Brewers have been outscored 47 to 15 in their first four games, but they will pick it up again this evening.
The Bucks also have a four game.
losing streak going.
They will host Phoenix tonight and congratulations to the UW River Falls women's hockey team division three national champions back to back years.
Congrats to them.
Our conversation with the lieutenant governor continues right after this on Up North News Radio live from Chippewa Falls on the Civic Media Radio Network.
A reminder
that our text to win a keyword this time for the break into spring contest is pillow.
That's for $100 cash.
This hour's prize.
You have to text it in by the end of the hour on the Civic Media app.
This hour's keyword is pillow.
We're talking to Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez about Election Day across Wisconsin today.
And I wanted to say thanks to, I believe it was Eric Intosa who sent us a photo from
outside of American Family Field where Luanne Bird was organizing a big crowd that got out to show their support for Susan Crawford in the Supreme Court race.
And again, you saw the big crowd there at American Family Field.
You saw the big crowd that was outside of the arena in Green Bay before the Elon Musk rally.
So for Lieutenant Governor Rodriguez here, I mean, you see a whole lot of folks who understand the stakes and aren't just voting.
They're out there making
a very public show of support about the importance of this election.
That's got to make you feel pretty good.
All civic engagement is good.
We have to make sure that we're letting people know what the stakes are.
And we're a 50-50 state.
This is going to be a tight election.
We know that it is.
And so every single vote counts.
And that's what I wanna make sure that people understand that their vote matters, their vote counts, they have an opportunity to have a say in what Wisconsin looks like moving forward.
And they have an opportunity to tell Elon Musk that we are not for sale.
And that he cannot just buy these elections as he's trying to do in our state.
This is the test case.
Is it gonna work?
All of this money pouring in from one man,
I mean that that to me is just very very concerning and we have to make sure that we are going to let our voices be known today and we'll see what's going on you know at the end of the day again polls open until 8 p.m.
and it's not even just the fact that he's putting all this money in but that he is almost single-handedly cutting
All of this funding are tax dollars that would normally come back to us through all manner of employment and services.
And I mean, there's some recently announced cuts that are really going to hit Wisconsin.
So they recently cut these grants that were to the states that were going to expire in six months anyway.
which is just the silliest thing.
It's all chaos.
It's all capriciousness.
It has no planning around it.
$210 million that Wisconsin is going to be losing in healthcare funds.
So what were we gonna use that money for?
We were gonna use that money to better prepare for the next pandemic.
We were gonna use that money to make sure that we could address some of our opioid crisis.
We were gonna use that money
to be able to help healthcare all across the state of Wisconsin, to be able to start creating infrastructure, updating things so that we can be ready for whatever comes at us moving forward.
And even though that funding was supposed to be sunsetted six months,
So what's the purpose?
Why would you do that?
You know, we all need to be able to prepare in Wisconsin.
You know, the governor has issued his budget.
It's very, very difficult to prepare about what we need to do when they've got all of this chaos at the federal level.
Well, and they continue to bring it in areas like, like Medicaid, for example.
I mean, for years, we've talked about the need to expand Medicaid, take advantage of the federal funding.
And now you've got Republicans in the legislature essentially patting themselves on the back for not expanding Medicaid because they only said, well, the, you know, the federal money could go away at any point, which of course was silly until Elon Musk came up and now it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But that still does not.
negate the need to study and approve expanding Medicaid and providing more stable healthcare for Wisconsin families.
I just have to believe that, you know, after Trump and Musk, there are again going to be people in Washington that want to look out for working families, families with disabilities and things like that.
I mean, that's what Medicaid covers.
And we call that badger care here in Wisconsin.
So if you're on badger care, you're on Medicaid.
And that's about 20% of the people that live here in Wisconsin are on badger care or Medicaid.
We have kids who are in foster care.
Those are the ones who are on on Medicaid.
older adults who are in nursing homes are on Medicaid.
That's what's usually funding how they get taken care of at the end of their life.
all of that burden is going to fall to families to be able to do this.
And that's a big difficulty as well.
And even though they're saying, oh, the federal government's going to be cutting this money, Montana just went and said, you know what, we're going to make sure that our Medicaid expansion keeps going through.
It was supposed to sunset and they want to keep it going.
Mississippi
actually passed it through their assembly and their Senate.
It got vetoed by the governor for changes, but they're looking to possibly expand now.
So other states know the value of this.
Wisconsin should be doing this to make sure that we can have folks who are covered.
And then the other piece for Medicaid expansion is that we are only one of two states that has not expanded 12 months postpartum.
So after moms have babies,
We are only one of two states that hasn't done that.
Us and Arkansas.
And you know what?
It's actually going through the legislature in Arkansas.
So we could possibly be the only state that does not provide health care for moms for 12 months after they have a baby.
which, again, makes no sense on so many levels, especially when you consider how many Republican cosponsors there have been for something like this, and it appears to be singularly Assembly Speaker Robin Voss, who is holding this up as some kind of a test case for the right wing.
This is all about a budget process that we'll conclude with that.
We're in the middle of it now.
The Joint Finance Committee is about to take its show on the road to get public hearings.
What kind of input do you want people to give the legislature as they determine what should or won't be in the next state budget?
There's one coming up tomorrow in Kakana High School.
There's one on April 4th at the Wisconsin State Fair Expo Center, April 28th at Hayward, at the Hayward High School, April 29th at North Central Technical College.
Go to those listening sessions so that you can tell them what you want to be able to see in the budget.
However, you could also go online if you go to the joint finance committee's online portal and be able to go and put in your budget comments as well.
So they do.
They do listen to you in terms of their constituencies.
So you have to make sure that your voices are heard about what you want to see within the budget moving forward.
The governor and I have a fantastic budget.
It puts a ton of investment in schools, a lot of investment in health care, and it creates some stability when we've got all this chaos at the federal level.
So it's super important that people make their voices heard.
And we will keep talking about that here throughout the budget process.
And Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez, thank you for your time.
We appreciate it.
Have a great day.
Thank you, Pat.
All right, we'll be back with Deborah Cronmiller from the League of Women Voters next year up north.
Hillary Scott is 39 years old today and I neglected to mention in the last segment we were playing Big Yellow Taxi because on this day in 1970 the Joni Mitchell album Ladies of the Canyon was released.
Alright here's an interesting bit of trivia or just more sheer coincidence.
It was a year ago today on April 1st that there was an election looming.
We played that exact same song from Lady A. Need You Now because Hillary Scott was having a birthday and then I introduced Deborah Cronmiller.
So welcome to the program.
Deborah Kreimiller from the Wisconsin League of Women Voters.
Deborah's looking back at last year's notes and like, oh, we have quite the deja vu today.
How are you?
Indeedy.
Thanks, Pat, for having me.
Yeah.
And the thing is, the way the state Supreme Court works, there's seven justices and so they're staggered.
And so for seven different years, there are Supreme Court elections and then there's three years where there aren't any.
But right now we're in a stretch of like
I think six in a row or something like that.
So I've already got you on the calendar for next year, about this time, because every state Supreme Court race is important, obviously, along with all the elections.
But let's just start with the overarching view of spring elections.
Set aside the negativity and the money.
the division, everything else.
Because at its heart, the spring elections in Wisconsin are based around all of these local nonpartisan offices that have gotten virtually no attention because of these other big races.
But I mean, if folks really want to talk about hometown civic engagement, I mean, it all starts right here.
And the league for years and years has been, you know,
Begging people to get out and vote at spring elections because this is really where the rubber meets the road in your community.
These are your local officials that are being elected today.
Your school board members and it's these are really the day to day decision makers that impact community.
Now, of course, as you're implied.
With a hundred million dollars coming into this Supreme Court election.
It's very hard to not focus on that one single race and And it's become extremely political because the money is coming in from very partisan sources and you know I feel almost badly for our two candidates who are running for the Supreme Court because in some way this this election has been hijacked
from them.
This is not just them talking to the voters.
This is a whole bunch of political action committees who are interjecting their opinions.
it's politicized and otherwise nonpartisan race.
Yeah, we I was just lamenting yesterday how this time in 2009, in the legislature, I had helped shepherd through the impartial justice bill, which cleaned up Supreme Court elections for about a year.
And then there was a change in the legislature.
But, you know, we showed that it can be done in Wisconsin, where you don't need to have billionaires and billionaire funded
groups hijacking these elections.
So it doesn't always have to be this way, but right now it is.
In
let their legislators know that they want campaign finance reform.
We want limits on the amount of money that can be spent in these elections.
We want to overturn, frankly, the Citizens United decision because money is not a person's vote.
Money is money, and corporations, a corporation's not a voter.
And so we really need to think about some of these bigger issues.
to start with our Congress.
And we really want to change that decision.
That's where we need to be addressing the problem.
Yeah, and you see why the why certain entities get so political about this because they know that if they were to lose control of Congress to folks with a more progressive bent, we might finally see getting all this big money out of politics.
But let's talk about one of the races on the ballot today, which does not involve candidates, but it is yet another constitutional referendum put forward by the Republican majority in the legislature that would take current law about voter
ID and put it in the Constitution, what has the league been saying to voters about that?
And we have a number of reasons why voting no is the right thing to do here.
First of all, it's already law, as you just indicated.
In Wisconsin, we have one of the most strict voter ID requirements, and that's in statute.
And no matter what happens today, that will not go away.
We will be, you know, into the future being asked to show an ID in order to vote at an election day or before.
So, you know, on one level, it's not necessary.
We already have to do that.
And no matter what happens today, we're going to have to do that.
If this passes today, one of the longer term issues is that codification of this ID requirement into the Constitution means that it will be much harder to take away that.
you know, mandate on the voter.
And we're only, you know, eight states have such a strict voter ID requirement, as Wisconsin does.
You know, there could be a legislature in the future that would say, hey, maybe we want to loosen this up a little bit.
Maybe we want to allow more types of IDs.
Maybe we want, you know, we want to change the law to the benefit of the voters, and it will be harder to do.
The legal also thinks the Constitution is not where we put minutiae.
The Constitution is a principles document.
These are the guiding mandates for all citizens in the state of Wisconsin, how our government should run.
The minutiae of what's in our laws is exactly where it should be with law and taking what I think of as law content and putting it in the Constitution really dilutes the importance of the Constitution.
And if you look at our history here in Wisconsin, we've amended our Constitution around numbers about 200 times.
And almost 100 times, it was to undo something we had previously done in a prior amendment.
So the Constitution, as it was originally written, is a darn good document, and we just shouldn't mess with it.
No, it is been rendered, you know, with much less value than it used to when you can do, you know, use it basically for partisan political monkey business.
And so there are many sound reasons for folks to vote.
No, it doesn't mean that they're against photo ID, but does mean that they're against using the Constitution to get something done when they can't get it done through the regular legislative process.
So into that voting process, we go for today.
And this is where your group is so
very helpful to so many people when they get to election day or they're approaching election day.
And even now, in this era, there are people who are voting for the first time, either because they're young adults or because they've been disengaged and now they've seen
whatever it might be.
It might be that they've seen the first 10 weeks of the Trump administration.
It might be, you know, a referendum for their school district or whatever the reason.
And they're saying, all right, it's time to turn the corner.
It's time to vote.
And I mean, it's right there in your name, you know, in terms of helping people vote.
So tell us about the services and resources that you provide for general voter information.
On our website, you will find a treasure trope of information about how to vote, where to vote, where to get the information.
We partner very, you know, in earnest with the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
They stand up a lovely website called myvote.wi.gov.
And there you can find information about
your polling place, and it's connected to your address, what you need to bring to vote, and all the different forms of ID that are valid here in Wisconsin.
What types of proof of residency are appropriate today if you're registering to vote?
And in Wisconsin, we do have same-day registration.
So if you're thinking to yourself, oh, shoot, I'm not registered.
I can't vote today.
Don't think that.
Grab some proof of residency in your ID and get to your polling place, and you can vote today.
The, you'll also, the league's site will also direct you to another website called vote411.org.
And that's a website that the league produces that actually gives you candidate information, unbiased candidate information.
We ask the candidates questions, whatever they tell us, we print in its entirety in the Vote411 Guide.
If they make a spelling error or a grammatical error, that's what the voter is going to see because we are not correcting or changing anything that the candidate sent to us in the way of an answer.
And we think that this is a really solid place to get candidate information.
We work with our local leagues to get local candidate information.
The state covers the state races and our national league covers the national races when there are those.
That website, by the way, are the websites that we've just talked about for folks that are catching us on the radio here.
Again, we've talked repeatedly about the MyVote website, myvote.wi.gov and also vote411.org.
And then finally, the League of Women Voters for Wisconsin, you can find them at my.lwv for League of Women Voters, my.lwv.org slash Wisconsin.
We'll get you there.
And that takes us to the Wisconsin Group itself and what all you've been up to.
And also, what does a League of Women Voters Group do when the circus leaves town?
What do you do for the rest of 2025?
We also are very active advocates.
So we have positions that we've created over the last 105 years of our history.
And as our legislature is working, we will be letting them know how we feel about certain bills that are being introduced, whether we support them or oppose them.
We have a large legislative committee, almost 40 members now that have different portfolios.
So we cover topics.
such as education or voting rights or the environment.
And when bills are introduced about those topics, the portfolio or the people involved with have expertise about our positions on those topics, they'll look at that bill, they'll analyze it, they'll determine if it's good or bad for the state of Wisconsin, and they'll make a recommendation to the whole committee.
And then whatever the committee says, as the state's lobbyist, I'll go in.
and then to ion lobbying and actually register our position.
And oftentimes we'll attach a statement kind of with a justification of why we're opposing or why we're supporting something based on the positions that the League of Women Voters holds.
I want to close with something that, again, you'd never know if the guy is joking or if he's actually trying to provoke a constitutional crisis, but we just talked about the importance of the Constitution, of honoring it, not abusing it.
when you have a sitting president of the United States saying jokingly and sometimes not jokingly that he might run for a third term, that there's a way around it and I'm sure he's trying to find all this popular support for doing it.
Again, you set the party labels aside.
There's this whole notion of what does it mean to adhere to a constitution and that we need to treat it as more than just a political piece of paper.
The league is very much a supporter of our elected officials upholding their oath of office.
And in that oath, they swear to defend our constitution.
And I take that very seriously.
And I think all elected officials should take that very seriously.
If we've gotten to a place where we're going to not do that, then I think voters have to question, is this the right person to be honoring the commitment to the voters in the United States about what is their responsibility in the same way that Congress can hold.
judges accountable to do their job.
They could impeach them if they're not doing their job.
We need to think about what is the job and are our elected officials doing that.
And in Wisconsin, we've seen that in the form of recall elections.
And it's an opportunity if people really believe, enough people really believe that a candidate is not doing what they were elected to do.
We have an opportunity to hold them accountable to do that.
It's a sadness that a person at the highest level of our government would be talking.
you know, kind of what I think of is almost gibberish that they would not uphold the Constitution.
So yeah, exactly.
Tony puts it really well on YouTube with the comment, the Constitution isn't a list of suggestions.
It's how we've kept this whole United States thing going emphasis on United.
And I love that your answer just now included the words honor and commitment and job that this is a job.
This isn't all about just power.
And it's about respect.
And I always appreciate all of these reminders, Deborah, every time you're on
Deborah Cronmiller is with the Wisconsin League of Women Voters, the executive director, and it's always such a pleasure to have her on as we approach election days to talk about the duty and the honor of civic engagement.
Deborah, thank you so much.
Great to touch base.
Hope you have a really great day.
Get out to vote.
Yes, by all means, get out to vote.
It's Tuesday, so we're going to talk to Chad Holmes to wrap things up next on Up North News Radio.
Chad Olms in just a sec.
One more reminder.
The Civic Media break into spring statewide text-to-win contest keyword this hour is pillow.
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Chad Holmes is here, 98.9 WXCO in Warsaw.
You're gonna hear his show next or across the Civic Media app.
Yes, exactly.
Thank you, Greg.
Let's see we've got from Tony on YouTube is Mayor Doug causing any more legal crisis in Wisconsin or in Wausau today.
Have the drop boxes been secured?
Only Mr. Wawesome knows.
So awesome in Wausau.
It's awesome.
Mr. Wawesome, how are you?
I'm doing good.
All right, good talk.
Have a good day
everybody.
Take it easy.
Get
out and vote.
I did not know that asking how I was supposed to be, how I'm doing.
It was supposed to be an essay.
answer here.
Yes, yes, we need we need answers to all these questions here.
No,
I'm fine today.
I mean, did you vote Chad?
No, I vote on election day.
Okay.
All right.
I guess the thing is and I will not be shamed There it is like I'm doing something wrong because I swear again, and I'm gonna I'm gonna be out here and throw a little little spice here for you guys early Other people involved in broadcasting
Well, if you don't vote early, there's something wrong with you.
There's nothing wrong with me.
We'd like to vote on election day.
Okay.
Yes.
So the point was when the whole, how are you doing?
That's what I wanted.
I
wanted the spice to flow and it has.
I look forward to Tuesday.
Actually, you know, you know why I feel that because coming out of this.
We had a break, right?
You know, we had a commercial break and, you know, every station plays their commercials.
There was a Brad Schimel spot where he just has Donald Trump rambling for 60 seconds.
I'm sure you guys
have heard this.
I don't know.
But they called Donald.
They couldn't even bother to get him on like either a computer or get somebody to record him in person.
They got him on a phone and he just rambles for 60 seconds.
Rambles.
And I heard this number of times because I was driving yesterday and I was listening to the brewery game.
And I heard this spot over and over again.
And now I've heard it on your show here this morning, quite already this hour.
But it's just Donald Ramling.
It kind of annoys me because it showed again.
There's nothing to it.
And yet, so many people adhere to it.
As I was looking at a.
Brad Schimmel remarks that he delivered to a group not long ago and where he talked about being part of a support network for Trump and he talks about how prior to last November that America was standing at the edge of an abyss and that America almost threw itself off into the abyss but then everybody voted for Donald Trump last November and I'm thinking dude what abyss are you talking about like like treating people
nicely equally, um, you know, maybe not polluting the planet.
I mean, what, what exactly was this abyss that, that Brad Schimel was saying Donald Trump saved us from?
They love talking in that highly dramatic language.
All like it's, it's got to be the most cinematic.
The world was on the precipice of disaster.
We were going to be destroyed by our enemies.
Like, okay, you're a judge in Wisconsin.
Can you just bring it down a bit?
But I mean, Donald's talking about how Brad, you know, his law and order and blah, blah, blah, blah.
And my first thought, and again, I- From the felon?
But that's the thing.
It's like, I'm thinking about, he's talking about, you know, backing the, I mean, he's a ramblin'.
Ramblin' for 60 seconds.
But the thing about it is, we gotta call out the truth.
You know, Brad Schimel says that the January 6th defendants and criminals-
Or traders They're treated poorly.
Yeah, and I would love I did any is anybody ever asked Brad Schimel Would you feel the same way if it was a bunch of people of color who had gone into the United States Capitol?
I think we've got to start
to be very... Two words there.
Domestic terrorists.
Those are the two words you'd be hearing.
And Donald Trump is convicted of 34 felonies.
Where is it law and order and protecting people that he seems to think there's no problem with having him walk around serving as president of the United States?
I mean, I know that there's a lot of layers to it, but there seems to be a lot that we talk about in circles instead of saying...
These are we gotta get to the core of who we are as a people and called off these people when they're when they're obviously I would call Racist.
Oh, yes, absolutely.
And when you look at the point of it's it's
You brought up the idea of those were people of color.
Well, that's what they did.
When January 6 happened, they reassigned them like, this is Black Lives Matter.
This is the corrupt FBI.
This is Antifa.
People who we generally associate with people of color so that it would be easier to digest and make it like, oh, that's the problem.
And they're all about backing the blue unless it's the cops at January 6.
Then they don't care about them at all.
And it was all...
from outside agitators until they realized it wasn't,
then it would
be okay.
I can't tell you how many times it pops up in the comments section when we have people on and we talk about the people that were at the Brewer's Game yesterday for Susan Crawford, the people in Green Bay, not happy that Elon Musk was there.
And it's always, oh, they're just government employees or paid agitators or Soros this or that.
It really can't register to them that so many of their friends and neighbors think that
We're not doing the right thing here by having a billionaire cut all of our essential services.
It doesn't register to them.
But I mean, thankfully, we've got these platforms to keep reminding people, putting real people on, Chad's going to do the same thing.
Coming up next on 98.9 WXCO.
At least I think
so.
It might just be two hours of, you know, the brewers and how bad things are, but we'll get those wheels back on the bus, right?
Anybody?
No.
I don't
know.
Okay.
All right.
I got a feeling this is gonna be a long year.
All right.
Well, Greg Mock is back in two hours for Matt and air on air.
Yeah, we got
Joseph.
Thank
you.
Thanks, Chad.
You have a happy day too.
Yes.
Joseph packets coming up on Matt and air on air.
So stick around for that as well and get it all at the civic media app or civic media dot us.
That'll do it for a Tuesday morning.
Get out and vote up north news radio is part of courier a pro democracy news network.
Have a great Tuesday.
We'll see you tomorrow morning here up north.