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Well,
one more day down with the Lakewood Soda Studio kind of relocated.
Hey there Wisconsin, it is 606 on this Friday morning, April 11th, 2025.
It's another beautiful morning to welcome you from the pre dawn moonlit plains nestled up against the caribou range of the Rocky Mountains here in Idaho Falls for one more day.
Come Monday, I will welcome you again from Lake WSOTA.
And as always, welcome you to Up North News Radio from wherever you're listing across the Civic Media radio network.
On the Civic Media app, by podcast, on social media, it's really nice that you would start your day and wrap up your week with us.
I got a question for you.
It's about me.
It's about my health.
Can my heart take one more hockey game?
Uh, I know that for, you know, many teams, the Wisconsin Badgers and others, the hockey season's long done.
Now we're, we're down to one final game left.
It's for the national championship.
And in the final four, which they called a frozen four in men's college hockey, uh, one of the semifinals involved the western Michigan Broncos that I have family ties to.
And pretty much every game lately in the, in the, uh, tournament has involved overtime or double overtime games.
and Western Michigan was a winner yesterday in the second overtime.
So we get to do this all over again.
One more time against, I don't even know, because it went into double overtime, it got past my bedtime.
So right now it's like schrodinger's opponent.
It might be Penn State, it might be Boston University.
I have no idea.
I'm going to look it up during the break.
So go Broncos and go Pat, hang in there for
one more hockey game.
Coming up on the program today, we will of course talk about Ben Wickler stepping down as chair of the State Democratic Party after six years, and the people who could take his place, including one friend of the show, a regular guest who has expressed interest in it.
Since Ben Wickler took the reins of the party,
Well we've had our share of statewide successes we have seen the party turn into a nationally known fundraising machine a messaging juggernaut and that's all fine and good but 2026 is going to be.
I mean a big ball of wax.
All right, you've got with new maps the opportunity for progressives to take control of the state assembly and the state senate but at the same time have to defend the governor's seat whether or not governor evers chooses to run for a third term there will be another state supreme court race in early 2026 and of course you've got all the congressional seats that are out there in play as well so who's who's best prepared to lead the democratic party of wisconsin
We will talk about that.
From a national news standpoint, we will talk to Courier Newsroom's Kia Vakil and one of my Courier Newsroom colleagues from the Pennsylvania outlet, the Keystone, Sean Kitchen, will join Kia and me coming up at the bottom of this hour.
And then, of course, Friday means our Weekend Review panel.
We will talk to Mark Jacob, Jim Santel, Jennifer Schulze.
We'll talk about how we are 50 years removed from Watergate.
When Richard Nixon faced impeachment for trying to use the Department of Justice to go after his political enemies, who would do something that low?
Well, we know the answer now 50 years later as Donald Trump weaponizes the Department of Justice in ways that make Nixon look like an amateur.
So we'll ask the panel
Not just about what he's been doing lately to target political opponents and even bringing up the word treason, you know, a crime punishable by death.
This is this is how dictators talk.
But we're going to turn things around with our panel starting with Jim Santel, a former U.S.
attorney, and ask, can we stop pretending that the president of the United States cannot face criminal charges when they commit actual crimes?
We will also hear from Kareem Hendrickson.
Now we've had her on on Wednesday in our homeroom segment talking about child care.
But now she'll have the results of a new statewide survey of child care providers all throughout the state and the dire straits that the industry is in and how much worse it will be if the Republican legislators writing the state budget leave child care providers
high and dry.
So all of that, Dan Schumacher will talk sports.
Brittany Merlowe will have our forecast heading into the weekend.
In fact, I believe I have said forecast right now, at least the general one here for the state of Wisconsin.
And here's what she has to say.
After spots of snow and dreary skies yesterday, now we're on schedule to brighten up as the temperatures warm until the next storm shows in on Sunday.
Oh, Brittany, here's the state forecast for today, patchy fog early, then partly cloudy and a bit warmer.
Highs will be in the low 50s up north mid 50s in the south, a northwest wind at five to 10 miles an hour for tonight.
A few clouds, maybe some frost, Brittany, lows in the upper 20s to low 30s with calm winds.
How long have I been saying, can we be done with the, you know, the 20s and, you know, 30s low 30s for temperatures?
Well this morning temperatures at the bus stop are about 10 degrees colder than they were yesterday.
It's 29 in Chippewa Falls 28 in Hayward 33 in Amory, Wausau is at 31, Wisconsin Rapids 28, 35 in La Crosse 31 in Green Bay, Madison's at 27, and in the Milwaukee area it's 32 at the airport, it's 34 at Radio Park where we bring in one Greg Bach getting set for another weekend of
working because that's what he does best after a after a long week of work.
We give him more work.
Yeah, Mr. Bob.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Yeah, it's a weekend.
It's a weekend of it's not I'm not I'm not.
digging coal.
So, um, but yeah, we have three shows at the laughing tap this weekend, one tonight, seven 30.
Uh, actually, while I'm talking about it, let me just, I want to check something for the folks here because I don't want to give bad information.
But tonight we have one show at seven 30 with the fantastic Mr. Daniel Van Kirk, who is the host of a podcast called dumb town, very popular.
Um,
Actually, there is only three tickets left for that show tonight.
So if you want to get tickets for tonight's show at seven 30, buy them like right this moment because by probably 10 o'clock, they'll all be gone.
And then, um, I believe if I'm not mistaken, Saturday early is also got three tickets left.
So really, if you want to come out and enjoy it and yet you can't buy your tickets right away, I would go for your 10 o'clock Saturday night tickets because they're still available.
But yeah.
Tickets are affordable.
No drink minimum.
We're going to have a really good time.
And yeah, come on down to the laughing tab, laughing tab.com for all the information, $22 online, $25 at the door.
No drink minimums and me.
You get to see me.
Mwah.
Mwah in the face.
And speaking of shows, there's you hit on most of the shows.
You forgot one of the shows.
The Dr. Kristen Lierley show premieres tomorrow afternoon at three o'clock.
on civic media stations in Green Bay and Oshkosh and on the Civic Media app.
And it will play back on Sunday afternoons at three.
And her first guest will be Emily Cephos, who ran for an assembly seat last year in the 56th district and has been very busy, much like Kristen, outspoken on TikTok and other matters where they're explaining what's happening out there in the world, in politics.
in very plain English, you know, the kind of thing that motherhood for good does as well.
I love how we're all just working to take these highfalutin things in Washington and Madison and saying, all right, kids, here's what this means.
Yeah, here's how it
breaks down to Main Street.
Yeah, and they do, you know, Emily and Kate Duffy and Kristen Lyrely, and they're all just doing wonderful work on that.
And I
I've been very much looking forward to hearing and very happy for Kristen for getting the show.
And, you know, hope at the same time, they'll continue, you know, being part of our little family here.
Alicia sends in on YouTube.
Emily is also my county Democratic Party chair.
I love her.
So there you go.
So, you know, people get on Saturdays too.
They get Dr. Liarley and they can get Jim Santel.
Are you that's so much knowledge.
A doctor and a lawyer on Saturday, so much knowledge.
The jokes right themselves here that would be amicus a law review and that is on Saturday mornings 9 a.m.
to 11 a.m.
on civic media stations and again replayed Sunday mornings as well so I mean it's like everybody gets a show here
Ah, you and Jim Madden here.
You have a show starting at 10 o'clock this morning.
Yeah, Bernie.
We got Dan Schaefer on today and 11 o'clock hour recombobulating the news and talking about Ben Wickler, the future of the Democratic Party in Wisconsin.
And, you know, probably some other things stuff.
I, you know, I don't know if we'll talk elections.
God knows we just just take a break.
But if we have stuff news on that, go for it.
But
it's always
great to have Dan here on Fridays.
And Dan goes in that same roster of people that can take all these complicated issues and break them down very nicely.
So, yeah, we've got some really good folks that people can catch all across the Civic Media radio network and on social media as well.
If you'd like to join the show at some point today, you can call or text us at 855-756-855-752-4842.
Again, feel free to use that Civic Media app.
Now you can use that to text us or call us.
You can put a comment in YouTube or Facebook as well.
I know that Roger's got some notes here from Steven's point about the music charts.
We've got other people from Mary to Keith saying good morning.
Shannon puts on Facebook, this song sucks.
Which is either a comment on Crossfire by Stevie Ray Vaughan, the opening theme here, or she's got the wrong show entirely.
I'm gonna go with she's not a Stevie Ray Vaughan fan, but I've been wrong about these things before.
I
mean, that's fine and everything, but like, I don't know.
I don't
want to say why take the time for that.
Yeah, I don't want to say keep it to yourself, but also just like, all right, well, I mean, we're not we're, luckily, it's very little music during this show.
Yeah, we don't do much.
Except well, that's 650 when we cram as many songs in as we possibly can.
But also, I mean, we have been talking about the music for this program, because coming up very soon, this program grows to three hours.
And so we're talking about what
What are we going to change?
What are we going to keep the same?
What are we going to do for music?
And so seriously, if you've got things you'd like to see done a little differently, like, you know, get a new host, or no, you know, music or guests or topics or whatever.
Put them in the comment section or you know, send us a send us an email radio at upnorthnewswi.com.
We'd love to have some input because in somewhere around two weeks, maybe a little bit less, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna spring this on you.
Suddenly the show is gonna go from six to nine instead of six to eight.
So consider, so get yourselves ready, people.
Get yourselves ready.
That doesn't suck.
Yeah, the suggestion box is open.
We always like to hear from you that way.
Quick note that you can catch our daily newsletter at up north news wi.com.
Click subscribe up in the top banner Christina Laurie put together a little something today, including the way that farmers are being impacted across Wisconsin by cuts that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have been making to program to various programs and breaking contracts with farmers, things that were farmers have already borrowed the money for
And now trump has cut the funding for it.
All right, we'll talk a bit about uh, ben wickler stepping down a state democratic party chair and mark coming up right after this break Wherever you're listening across wisconsin on this beautiful friday morning when you're here, you're up north on the civic media radio network
You're listening to civic media
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
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This of course would be Francis Albert Sinatra who stepped into a studio on April 11th 1966 and Recorded this song and tagged it out with what you're about to hear here Which would become one of his catchphrases which he was just riffing it goes like this You just never know where catchphrase is gonna come I
just want to know if the guys in the booth when they were recording they go didn't like did he just say
do be do be do.
It was 1966.
It was their cowbell moment.
You know, I'm less afraid of him now.
You should never not be afraid of Frank.
So there a little bit more music trivia, including a good one from Roger and Steven's point.
I checked it out during the break.
We'll share that in today's history lesson coming up in a half hour as well.
Looking at our daily newsletter.
I was looking at the archives and there are two different stories that I want to bring up.
One of them was three years ago today when our newsletter included this story that answering a constituent question at an event in Medford, Senator Ron Johnson acknowledged reports that he had doubled his personal wealth while in office and that he personally benefited from
from a significant tax break that he demanded be part of the 2017 tax bill.
He just came right out and said it, said, I'm a rich guy and I did things that made me richer.
What are you going to do about it?
And in his next election, he just got fellow billionaires and millionaires to run a whole bunch of ads trying to convince people that, you know, Mandela Barnes was scary.
So stick with the billionaire who's taken all your money in tax cuts.
It's a nice gig if you can get it.
Then you go back a year, four years ago today, April 11th of 2021, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which was, you know, a conservative majority at the time, the court rejected an attempt by the far right wing legal group, Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, to purge almost 70,000 voters from the voter rolls.
On a five to vote, the justices said the voter rolls
have to be modified at the local level, not by the Wisconsin Elections Commission, as the lawsuit had been demanding.
And I bring this up because we talked about it the other day with what's happening in North Carolina, that what's happening far too often in Republican circles is trying to get voters disenfranchised before the election or challenge their votes after an election.
Here's an interesting thought when on your ideas.
And that takes us to Ben Wickler, who is stepping down after six years as chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, also known as DPW, also known as WisDEMS.
And it is fair to say that Ben Wickler is going out on a high note.
He himself said he's leaving the party in extraordinary shape, and a few folks would disagree.
We're not going to say he was perfect.
There's always work to be done from
the standpoint of organizing or messaging, you can't dispute the fundraising, though.
This is somebody who, when I first met him, when he was contemplating running for chair, said one of the things he thought would be his strong suit would be national fundraising.
He had made a lot of connections over the years in some of his other efforts.
And, well, here's the numbers as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
During his time as chair,
Wickler raised $262 million.
By comparison, the Republican Party raised $97 million between July of 2019 and April of 2025.
Compare that to the five years before Wickler took over when Democrats raised a little more than $37 million compared to the Republicans $33 million.
So it just tells you fundraising has continued to mushroom in politics overall.
And if that's
If that's where we're going, then you better be good at it.
And Ben Wickler clearly demonstrated that he's got the chops for fundraising.
But now you head into 2026.
The way this works is the parties, and I believe the state Republican Party is on the same schedule.
Don't hold me to it though.
But that in odd numbered years, because you don't want to do this in the middle of an election year,
But in odd numbered years, the party chair stands for election at the state convention, which for the Democrats is usually sometime in early June, if I'm not mistaken.
And so round early June or so, state Democrats will meet and they will elect a new chair.
This chair is not some kind of a figurehead here.
I mean, you've got Governor Evers and Tammy Baldwin as titular leaders of the party, Mark Boakhan, Gwen Moore, all kinds of other great folks.
You've got Greta Neubauer, Diane Hasselbein and more.
But the chair of the party running things on a day-to-day basis has to defend the governor's seat, whether Tony Evers runs for a third term or not, has to target
congressional seats like Derek Van Ordens and Tony Weeds and all the others where Republicans are.
But also because of the new maps, Democrats came close to taking control of the legislature.
Well, next year, if Donald Trump keeps doing dumb stuff, Democrats are going to be very well positioned to possibly take over the Assembly and or the Senate.
But it's not just going to happen.
People have to make these things happen from, again, the fundraising standpoint, the organizational standpoint, the messaging standpoint.
So who's going to do that?
Well, several names have been floated out there.
There is actually one candidate already, and that would be the executive director of the state party, Devin Remacher.
But among the other people named, well, there's Democratic strategist, Joseph Pecky, who late yesterday put out a note saying that he is interested in it.
He is thinking about it, announcement of some sort to follow.
Other names floated out include former Senate candidate Alex Lazarie, Secretary of State Sarah Godluschi, and the aforementioned Assembly Democratic leader Greta Neubauer.
And again, that's just for starters.
They're, they're most likely could be other people coming in as well.
It's not like any single person is going to, they're not going to clear the runway necessarily for any one person to come in.
So everybody's going to have to come in and make their case.
And then, you know, the delegates that come to the convention will make their choice known.
So we'll be watching that.
As far as what Ben Wickler is going to do next, he said he's just going to take some time off.
um, maybe do a little writing.
In fact, he's already started.
Like so many of us, uh, he's got a sub stack account.
Now I have not done much of anything with my sub stack account yet because I haven't found that 25th hour in the day.
But Ben Wickler, knowing him, he probably is better at time management and look for him to be putting some notes on there.
And then I will just close by saying that, uh, Derek Van Orden, uh, after angrily,
denying, screaming his denial that Republicans were going to be cutting benefits of any sort.
Well, yesterday, all the three Republicans, every Republican voted to pass a budget resolution that would cut $2 trillion and make massive cuts to benefits if it were to go through.
We'll come back and talk to a key of a keel and Sean
And we are back on this Friday morning, 6 34.
Time for our courier newsroom roundtable, which of course always includes Kia Vakil, our political editor, senior correspondent, all around good guy hanging out with us from California.
Kia, hello, how are you?
Hello, I am all right.
I've survived another week of the Trump administration.
So
how did you we we used to say, you know, it was like a fire hose of news and I like that you've actually managed to improve on that.
eight fire hoses
yeah I feel like I have eight fire hoses pointed at me from different directions and I'm just constantly trying to dry off and it's impossible
oh wait this just in another flip-flop on tariffs no I'm kidding but who knows maybe I'm not I don't know by the time this airs you never can tell so I mean
I mean, he did on Thursday say, uh, the chair, the tariffs on China are a hundred forty five percent, not a hundred twenty five percent.
So, uh, you know, by the time this airs, they could be a hundred sixty five percent.
They could
be
four hundred percent.
Who knows?
You could.
You don't know.
And it's, it's, you know, the job of all the journalists at Courier to try to measure the latest reaction to what's going on.
And that's where we welcome in our friend from the Keystone in Pennsylvania, Sean Kitchen, political correspondent.
Sean, how are you?
I'm doing great.
You know, I'm just hanging in there like everyone else is at this point.
You know, just the amount of information and news coming out in Pennsylvania is like really hard to keep up with with everything happening right now.
It really is.
I mean, and to that, and we'll get back to the national headlines on a bit, Sean, but while we got you here, I mean, you guys recently had a special election that got a lot of attention.
I mean, not as much as the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, but the national level of dissatisfaction, I think.
played a role in yours as well, tell us what the election was.
Yeah, so in Pennsylvania, we had a special election for the State Senate race in Lancaster County, which is a deep red county in Pennsylvania.
And the person who won is the mayor of East Petersburg or Small World Barrow.
His name's James Malone.
And this was a special election where the incumbent who left take a job in Dave McCormick's office
um one without any opposition in 2022 and the last time he did have opposition he cleared like 75 percent of the vote in this district so it's a Democrats one in a really deep red district
and i mean that's that's that's deep that is deep red district 75 percent and so what what were people saying about it
um i was able to go so first off this is
This election is the reason why Elise Stefanik is no longer a cabinet member or picked for the Trump administration with the UN because of the surprise it sent.
I got to go down there the day before the election to watch Congressman Chris DeLuzio knock on doors in that district.
DeLuzio came out from Allegheny County, which is out by Pittsburgh for this.
And according to DeLuzio, Republicans in
DC and other parts of the country were very nervous about this election I didn't think he would this guy was gonna pull it off alone, but he ended up pulling it off and You know, it was a referendum one the Democrats were able to outmobilize Republicans the Republicans ran a really bad candidate who is hated by his party in that county But also this was a referendum on the stuff happening with Trump and Elon Musk
Oh, without a doubt.
And we'll get into that as well.
Kia from again, just from a national standpoint, remind folks a little bit more about Elise Stefanik and why she's still doing her crummy old job instead of a shiny new job with the Trump administration.
Yeah.
So the Trump administration in, I think it was December or the transition team, you know, plucked a couple House Republicans for cabinet posts and or just, you know, posts in the administration, despite only having
I don't know what the majority is.
It's very small.
I think it's five seats, uh, somewhere around there, uh, you know, that's been complicated by a couple of Democratic deaths of lawmakers who are older.
But, you know, as the special elections have started in Florida last week and in Wisconsin with the state Supreme Court race last week, um, we have seen...
massive turnout on the Democratic side and huge underperformances on the Republican side, even in the Iowa special elections we had since we've had since January.
Republicans are clearly very, very spooked that Stefanik, whoever that seat could have flipped to Democrats.
So they pulled her nomination to be ambassador to the UN and she's now back in the house.
She went on a little mini farewell tour before that so it's a it's a it's a little bit funny or perhaps a lot funny But you know if you're looking at it from The perspective of numbers it was clearly the right move from them to pull it because it was crazy to pluck multiple House members for roles anyway when you have a narrow that margin and you have a House Republican, you know caucus that oftentimes can't you know
can't can't agree on very much of anything other than they want to tax cut taxes for the rich so uh yeah that's where things stand now she's back in leadership
so getting to those numbers and tax cuts of course yesterday the house of representatives by the narrowest of margins approved their version of a budget bloop
blueprint, it is nowhere near the Senate Republican version of it.
And again, only that one vote margin Kia, which I mean, I feel like we've been saying this about budget debates for two plus years now, that they can't all get on the same page, except to win like a vote like this.
But not to get a final deal across the finish line.
I've not seen any indications that that House and Senate can get together on this anytime soon.
But I mean, they have to.
Yeah, I mean it's gonna be really interesting because you have the moderates in the house in the Senate There are a handful to be clear.
There's like maybe a few in each chamber, but they are enough to sink it where They are going to really if they're forced the only way to make the math math on this if you want to cut a trillion and a half and spending which is their goal is to take a sledgehammer to Medicaid that is the only way to do it and some of those moderates, you know
are self-interested enough and smart enough to know that if they do that, it will be one of the last votes they ever take in Congress if they're up in 2026.
And so, you know, Susan Collins will lose if she votes to cut Medicaid.
In Pennsylvania, I'm blanking on his name.
The Fitzpatrick will lose.
Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate
congressman.
He's got Perry as well.
I mean, not moderate, but...
No
comparatively one in four Americans relies on Medicaid for health insurance That is not a subtle program to change And so will they do it they might because it's the only they want to pass tax cuts They want to the the the the hard right people want to cut spending And you have a lot of different puzzle pieces here But I don't see and no one sees how it's possible without cutting Medicaid and you know, it'll be interesting to see
If they genuinely do that, if they cut healthcare for one and potentially up to one in four Americans, including lots of young kids and pregnant women, just to fund tax cuts for billionaires and corporations, that message writes itself.
So, you know, take that vote.
If you're going to take that vote, you better be prepared for the consequences of it.
Well, let's find out what it was like in Pennsylvania, but I'll do so by giving away the lead to our Sunday morning newsletter.
And we've been talking about Derek Van Orden, you know, for the past couple of days here.
But the lead will be some 48 hours after Congressman Derek Van Orden belittled the committee witness and screamed that Democrats were lying about historic cuts to vital programs He and the other five members of the Wisconsin's House Republican delegation voted to approve a budget resolution seeking historic cuts to vital programs Sean for the delegation out there.
Are they equally in denial and adamant that they want cuts, but the cuts won't actually hurt the average Pennsylvanian
so
I know like a few weeks ago, once the continuing resolution was happening, there was Congressman Rob Bresnahan who posted that he would promise not to vote for these cuts and then voted for the continuing resolution that opened up for the $880 billion cuts to Medicaid.
And that got a lot of attention.
I mean, but also for me, this reminds me of being on the campaign trail last year, hearing former Senator Bob Casey talk about this pretty much every stop he made.
Republicans are going to pass this massive tax cut.
And in order to do this, they're going to cut the social safety net programs and they're going to cut Medicaid and doing so.
This was a campaign message that Casey tried hammering home the whole entire time.
But unfortunately, we don't have them in the Senate right now.
From here, we have the volatility that they created in the markets.
And you mentioned Congressman Bresnahan out there, and caught my eye that there was a story in the Keystone about all of the stock trading that that particular Congressman does out there.
Can you tell us about that story?
Yes.
So Rob Bresnahan was first elected this past year.
He defeated Matt Cartwright in northeast in Pennsylvania, which is like the old
coal region of Pennsylvania, one of the old coal regions in northeastern PA.
And his family, it's a little background, his family started a construction company that he inherited at the age of like 19 and turned that into a stock portfolio.
So by the time he went into Congress, he was worth close to $70 million.
And he is now one of the most prolific traders of congressional stocks within his freshman class.
selling and buying or selling and making millions of dollars in stock trades.
Well, and that gets us kid to the point of and again, it's all speculative at the moment.
But I'm going to repeat what I said yesterday on the program.
I actually don't want Hakeem Jeffries to come to a microphone.
I don't want Chuck Schumer to come to a microphone.
I want Martha Stewart to come to a microphone and say, this is why I ended up in prison for insider information.
And here's what's happening in Congress just in the past week.
Now, again, we don't know that there's a signal chat out there.
But if you're going to put war plans on
You know, I'm not gonna be surprised if we learn about insider information before one of Trump's many announcements back and forth back and forth
Yeah, I mean I would almost you know He literally posted to truth social now is a good time to buy and then the markets thought up what 11% on the Nasdaq though I will note on Thursday it took a big dip again as of at least as of the time we're recording and so
Yeah, and he had a White House event with like giant financier types literally calling out how much how many billions of dollars they made on Thursday Go look that up on the career newsroom tiktok if you want it is a wild clip because it's just blatant oligarchy and corruption and It apparently doesn't matter his supporters a lot of supporters just don't care But yeah, I it'll be very interesting to see
the stock trades made by members of Congress in the past week or two once that.
A little bit about that comes to light.
Yes, I think we're going to continue to learn more about that.
Sean, we certainly saw so many demonstrations last weekend, the hands-off marches.
I mean, in small Wisconsin towns, you would not dream that you'd see, you know, 100 people, much less hundreds of people gathered in some of these places.
Can you tell us a bit about what it was like last weekend around Pennsylvania?
Yeah, I think we saw the same thing here in Pennsylvania.
We definitely did.
I was down in Philadelphia for it.
I decided to go home, take the train down the Philly, and close to 10,000 to 15,000 people came out.
I think what's more impressive about that is you had a few thousand people in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a few people in Harrisburg on the Capitol steps, thousands of people in Pittsburgh, but also in these suburban communities outside of Philadelphia.
You had thousands of people in places like Doylestown, Quakertown,
You know, for having 15,000 people in Philadelphia, but then having thousands of more, 10 smaller rallies in the suburbs of these cities, it was something to see.
I mean, even in the more rural and conservative parts of the state, you had people out there protesting Trump and Musk.
I just have to seize on something that you said though.
You took the train into Philly.
Tell the folks in Wisconsin what that's like because we were so close to having that before Scott Walker took over.
Talk about the ability to hop on a train and get to a large metro area in your state.
Oh, it's great.
I live like within a half mile of an Amtrak station and the Keystone line is one of the most widely used Amtrak lines in the country.
It goes from Harrisburg to
to New York City and the great thing about that is where my parents live in the Philadelphia suburbs, it's faster for me to take the train from Harrisburg to Philadelphia than it is for my parents to drive in from the suburbs of Philadelphia into Center City.
The sound you're hearing right now is a whole lot of Wisconsin people just banging their head on their kitchen table or their desk over what we almost add here versus what you get to enjoy there.
And it's also great
being able to just sit down and work on your computer for a couple hours.
as you're taking the train into town.
And Kia, we're not even going to get started on LA traffic.
That's a whole different thing over there.
We have Amtrak, I will say.
I
can get to San Diego.
I have taken the Amtrak from LA to Seattle.
I have taken it to Austin, Texas.
So even us out here in the car capital of America have Amtrak.
So eat your heart out, Pat.
Oh, yes.
But to follow all the progress on on the tax bill on the budget bill in DC, we are very happy that Kia Vekil is here most every Friday.
And this time around from Courier Newsroom, Sean Kitchen from the Keystone.
Sean, what's where do we find you on the Keystone?
Yes, keysonnewsroom.com.
And then we are on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
Awesome.
All right, Sean, thanks very much.
Appreciate your time.
Thank you.
Have a good weekend.
Right.
Kia, you have a good weekend too.
We'll see you later.
And we will have today's history lesson after this.
You're up next.
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Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website,
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You're muted, Pat.
Gene Kelly, Singing in the Rain, movie premiered this day in 1952.
Today's history lesson includes Bob Dylan, who on this day in 1961 played for the first time at Gertie's Folk City and Greenwich Village, opening for John Lee Hooker and performing a new song of his entitled, Blowing in the Wind.
Again, the stay in 1961.
It's
too bad if he would have went somewhere someday.
He would have.
Yeah, look at me.
She's, you know, playing Eau Claire, Green Bay, Mankato, and it didn't do much in between the two.
I know.
Singer Lisa Stansfield is 59 years old today.
Here was her 1989 hit.
Oh my,
so many memories.
Uh-oh.
We've triggered something in Greg.
So growing up, there was a radio station we listened to every morning in the house.
And this was one of those songs that was just every day.
If you got up early enough, you may hear it twice in the morning.
But I remember this song.
There's a collection of songs from years that I can smell coffee brewing.
My mom getting ready.
and me not wanting to get for
school.
Instead dancing around the kitchen to Lisa's dance field.
There you go.
Did you notice the turntable behind me here?
I put a put a new album up.
What album is that Pat?
That would be the Beatles.
And let it be.
It was the number one album 55 years ago this week.
You still get goosebumps when you hear the internal this I do
of course And of course now a lot of folks Think of James Corden and the Carpool karaoke bit with Paul McCartney Instant classic there on this same day in 1970 was the launch of the ill-fated Apollo 13 So yesterday we had the launch of the Titanic on its maiden voyage today Apollo 13 Maybe this isn't the week you should be doing big new projects
So there you go.
There's your excuse not to do anything this weekend.
Well, you know, the time of year it's destined to fail.
Pat, this weekend, I'm going to build a house.
What could go wrong?
Another singer I haven't heard from in a while here with a birthday today, singer Joss Stone is 38.
And it's not like she hasn't been busy.
It's just that, you know,
I'm kind of a musical Luddite that way, unless you're like all over the radio.
I don't hear much.
But anyway, she was quite the musical prodigy at the time.
This was 2003, I want to say.
She was quite young and they were like banking a lot on her.
They were trying to
put her
everywhere.
Yes.
So be curious to see what all she is doing more recently.
A bittersweet note from this day three years ago at the CMT Awards, the Judds reunite for their first TV appearance in 20 years and performed their hit from 1990.
And of course they they received just this you know ravenous welcome from the crowd You know this 20 year reunion You know the CMT always gets this big crowd and in three weeks later They would they would be forever separated as It's just worth noting that the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline is for Anybody who's in a crisis or those looking to help someone else?
If you want to speak with a trained listener, call or text 988.
You can also visit 988lifeline.org to chat or to get more information.
On the national calendar today, this is Clean Up Your Pantry Day.
This is Parkinson's Disease Awareness Day.
Barbershop Quartet Day.
I don't know.
If I'm given Barbershop Quartet or the Harmony of the Judges, I think I'm going to go with Country.
On this one.
There you
go.
Let's see.
This is national eight track tape day.
See, that's what I needed back here instead of the turntable is I needed a good old eight track player here.
Does anybody still have an eight track player?
I mean, just for a working eight track player is what I'm trying to say.
I am I am betting.
dollars to donuts.
There are some guy in some city who's sitting there having a conversation with other people.
You don't understand, man, the eight track has a quality that even vinyl doesn't have.
You got to go eight track or nothing.
I'm going to, I'm going to go with no.
Nobody's ever said that.
Nobody's ever talked about the superior quality of the eight track where you're listening to a song and then in the middle of the song, it starts to fade and as the song is fading out here.
Good junk and then the song starts to come back up again, and it's just not the way anybody was designed to hear music.
Yeah, but it's national a track day anyway And let's see at finally it's national poutine day.
Yes
Again, how did we let Canada invent this?
How was this not a wisconsin thing?
It's cheese curds.
It's french fries.
It's gravy
It's
everything I per I truly think we did and somehow can that Canadian finagled it away for us or the person who invented it lived here for I just I'm sorry.
I don't believe Canada invented it.
Sorry, Canada
Are you a poutine truth or is that what you're
saying?
I'm a poutine realist my friend.
I'm
not listening to
the fit.
I'm not listening
to
fake news a
I'm putting you in the comment section with all the rest of these characters today.
There's today's history lesson.
Coming up next, we're going to have Green Hendrickson back on and talk about a new statewide survey of childcare providers to talk about just how much trouble the industry is in already and what's going to happen if this next state budget leaves them high and dry.
when it comes to making child care affordable, making sure that folks get a living wage.
We're also going to have our weekend review panel with former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel and journalist Mark Jacob Jennifer Scholesy.
We'll talk about Ben Wickler stepping down as head of the Democratic Party and the week that was in the White House all ahead on Up North News Radio on the Civic Media Radio Network.
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