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.
You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now for my Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
Hey, good morning.
It is 7 0 6 and it's May.
It's May.
It's Greg.
How does Justin Timberlake put it?
He puts it a very special way that only he can say.
So hold on.
Justin, what was
going
on for today?
Thank
you, buddy.
There we go.
I couldn't get it quite right with the same intonation that he does.
Fervor?
Fervor, yes.
And he insists he didn't mean to say May.
It's me, but
it's
May.
Yes.
Here's Brittany Merleau, meteorologist and all around good patient person as we try to figure out how to pronounce the month that we're in here.
It's gonna
be
Brittany.
uh, Robin Tigerton right away.
Happy May Day.
We were talking about password, you know, password day.
We're not, we're not asking you to share any passwords, but Robin Tigerton says, when you talk about password, I remember the game show.
There it
is.
Password with Alan Ludden, who was born and buried in Mineral Point, Wisconsin.
And his wife, Betty White.
Oh, that's right.
Yeah.
And she
never married after him.
She was like,
she did not.
She said, once you've had the best, why go anywhere else?
So I know.
Isn't that great?
Let's see a million.
Amelia says, happy May Day.
She's on YouTube says, as a May flower, I've been sufficiently watered during my walk into work.
Yeah, it's definitely some April showers happening right now.
Right now, yes it is.
Right
now, right now.
All right.
What's happening out there, Brittany?
Oh, we do have some moderate to heavy rain moving in right along that southern state line there, pushing in towards Madison, into Milwaukee, some decent rain rates.
You could hear some thunder rolling too on occasion and already a lot of the state.
Southern half of the state has picked up about a quarter inch of rain so far.
As I look down further south into Illinois, they've picked up an inch to an inch and a half in places.
So as this continues to lift north, more and more rain rising rivers too.
So keep an eye out for that.
We could see some blood warnings go out as we go through this afternoon and into tomorrow because it's going to be raining pretty much all darn day.
I'm so sorry.
It's going to dark.
damp and dreary day.
Overcast skies and temperatures today will make it to the low 60s far northwest.
That's because it's going to be a nicer day for you.
You're going to see a lot less rain in the northwest part of the state earlier today because this rain is moving in south.
It will spread scattered showers north by late morning and then in the afternoon it kind of switches.
The moderate rain will be in the northern half of the state while the southern half of the state this afternoon starts to dry things out.
but we're not done.
We've got two low pressure systems.
This is just the first one moving through right now out of the south.
We've got another low pressure this evening moving in from out of the west.
So that's going to spark up some light showers, maybe a few rumbles of thunder.
far northwest later on this evening and that is going to sweep across the state overnight.
So more rain expected overnight into early tomorrow morning.
A few of those showers could still be lingering and then we start to dry things out.
But of course it's going to keep us breezy and cooler tomorrow with mid 40s to mid 50s for our highs.
We are looking at a frost or potentially a freeze far north tomorrow night as those clouds clear out and then.
The nice weather hits.
The high pressure blocks in.
It stays for a good chunk of next week.
Temperatures are going to be warming and a ton of sunshine after that.
But when you get this rain and then the sunshine, allergies are already high.
They're going to spike once again.
Yeah, but still the nice temperatures, the prospect of several days of them and.
As far as the rain goes, there's a reason why it's needed.
Uh, Rob goes on to say good morning from Tigerton.
It's cloudy with rain and 43.
Despite the rain we have been getting lately.
There are still grass fires.
Three of them along I 41 near Kakana in out of gaming County.
There was also a grass fire along highway 22 northeast of Cecil and northeastern Sean O County.
Uh, but he also notes that, uh, grass will be growing.
Mowing season is here.
Rivers are rising as well.
So everybody take heat of.
of that.
If you're doing the no-mo-may that starts today, we are not.
Greg has made his feelings known on this, but whatever you do to protect pollinators, you go for it.
You do it.
We've got a ditch across the street that we don't mow anymore after we heard about all the pollinators and taking care of all of them.
So let's do what we can, especially with all that nice weather, the grass, like Rob said, is definitely going to be growing.
Oh, it is.
It's nice to see it's greening up too.
Yes.
My lawn definitely needs that.
I let it grow very long and then it was a beautiful emerald green and then I cut it and I'm like, oh, this is terrible.
Hey, Brittany, you know, we talk about music a lot at 650 and sometimes what is on the top of the charts.
I'd like to go a little further down the chart today.
This week's Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Do you happen to know the number 78 song in the United States this week, according to the Billboard Hot 100?
I'll give you a hint.
It's a, it's a hot hit that we have played on this show previously.
Oh gosh.
Um, is it the song that you guys always sing to me?
No, that's Wichita Lightning from Glen Campbell.
That is, that is not on the Hot 100.
I was
ready, man.
You didn't.
Oh,
it's not just in Timberlake's that May
song or whatever.
It's not, it's not just in Timberlake either.
Okay, grandma.
It
might have something to do with a movie that the kids like to go see.
From the Minecraft movie, the number 78 song, which sets a record, and I'll tell you what the record is in just a moment, is this little ditty from the Minecraft
movie.
Greg knows the words.
How can you not as often as we've played it?
And I dare say we may have played the song already more than any other radio station in Wisconsin and we're a talk station.
But I bring it up because at 34 seconds, it is now the shortest song in history to make the Billboard Hot 100.
And I give you
the 17 second mix.
Yeah.
Yep.
I must say the cowbell.
I approve.
You gotta have the cowbell.
But that is just the latest little bit of history from the Minecraft movie which I know Greg emphasized before that Jack Black took a bit of a risk to take this on and it is paying off handsomely.
The movie has now grossed $800 million globally.
I love
it.
It's at the moment the biggest movie of 2025.
Good.
And so Steve's Lava Chicken is just one part of it, but no.
is making music history.
It also has the chicken jockey trend that's become so chaotic according to the New York Post that several movie theaters have banned children from seeing the PG adventure action flick without a parent or guardian present because they engage in unacceptable behavior usually surrounding throwing popcorn during the chicken jockey part of the movie for whatever reason.
This is the cultural zeitgeist of 2025 boys and girls.
We're just we're just being run by a bunch of
Miss
Hannigans.
My goodness.
That was an anniversary, by the way.
Yeah, it was.
Rob jumped back on YouTube and says, what was the longest song on the Billboard Hot 100?
I bet you I'll bet you it was Let It Be by the Beatles.
No, it's no, it's
what was
the I'll look it up.
You're going to look it up.
OK.
His Google machine is going to do it.
So.
Heat waves
by glass animals.
Heat
waves?
Heat waves by glass animals.
Oh, no, no,
no.
I'm sorry.
No, no, I'm sorry.
That's the song that's been the longest as far as chart position.
What song has been?
What?
You guys talk I'm looking at.
Okay.
Okay.
Andre 3000's I swear I really want to make a rap album But this is literally the way the wind blew me this time which clocks in at 12 minutes and 20 seconds
Okay,
debuted at number 90 on the chart But there was also a Taylor Swift song called all too well Taylor's version That for a time had the record at 10 minutes and 13 seconds.
That's the Jake Gyllenhaal song she did on SNL
Oh, OK.
Now, I was saying American Pie by Don McClain.
But I think he's thinking top 40 there, not hot 100.
But
any
hope.
Cassandra writes in, the first movie that I saw Jack Black in was Saving Silverman.
Is it Saving?
Yeah, Saving Silverman.
My mom and I laughed so hard.
And my mom kept saying, who are these people through laughing and crying?
That basically is Jack Black's entire appeal.
Is that people are going to laugh and go, what is this?
Who is this?
So you're good on
him.
It was it was Andre 3000, 12 minutes and 20 seconds.
OK, yeah.
Luke Bathers
on the he says screaming free bird.
He is.
He's got free bird in all caps there, which by the way, free bird, the live version, which comes in at 16 minutes and something.
That was the song we used to play at the college radio station if we needed to leave the studio for an extended period.
My friends
was a working man by rush.
Mm-hmm.
That was back when there was a McDonald's across the street and you could you could drop the needle on that record and go get yourself a burger and fries and come back just for the end in time.
Tails behind the curtain and radio.
Also that
meal at McDonald's back then?
A dollar fifty.
Yeah, that would be the regular price.
Exactly.
All right.
Brittany, thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
All right.
We'll see Brittany again in an hour with an updated forecast and forecast throughout the day here on up.
There you go.
See?
Did it, Greg.
Number two.
I went a week without giving the wrong show name and now I've done it twice in two days.
Hey man, you got this.
I believe in you.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
Let's see.
There was a cabinet meeting at the White House.
Yesterday it was what is North Korean?
Is that the proper way to describe the North Korean ask the cabinet meeting with all the secretaries heaping praise on dear leader?
Hints of North Korean.
Yes.
Wisps
of North Korean.
Especially when funny that you mentioned Annie because there's a great column here in the New York Times by Sean McCreech.
President Trump has a message for the nation's children.
Prepare to sacrifice for your country.
in talking about how there may be emptier than usual store shelves by Christmas time.
Trump said, you know, somebody said, oh, the shelves are going to be open.
Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they normally
would.
To
which the New York Post, which is how I stumbled upon the story, their cover is skimp on the Barbie with a picture of Barbie on the cover.
Yes.
Chef's kiss.
Oh, absolutely.
So kids, Donald Trump thinks you get $30 for Christmas every year and that you're going to have to make do and just get $2 and they might cost more.
He also thinks those kids are like Victorian age and they're all like no matter the gender, they're in like long dresses with curly hair coming them going, mother, thank you for the dial.
And I love that the next line from Sean McCreech says this from the billionaire crypto salesman golf club operating Palm Beach by way of Fifth Avenue president with the Golden Office and the Golden Triplex apartment There he sat surrounded by the other billionaires with whom he has filled his cabinet telling the boys and girls of America They'll just have to make do with fewer toys this year for the greater good.
He's a villain in a movie Well, he is and and again if if he had said
Times could be hard, but we're gonna get to a better place.
Maybe you wouldn't have won the election.
I get that, but it would have been more honest then.
I'm gonna fix all this stuff on day one, and then afterwards go, ah, psych, you kids, you get too many toys anyway.
Nobody's bringing up the fact, though, that Elon said for quite a bit that we were gonna go through two years of, quote, pain.
Yeah, but again, the stuff that, they were saying the stuff that.
Schruppelstein yesterday.
Again, imagine it coming out of Joe Biden's mouth.
Absolutely.
And the think pieces after that.
Still coming up this hour, State Representative Jody Emerson and State Senator Jeff Smith from the Chippewa Valley, from the heart of America's Up North, live from Lake Wissota.
Thanks for making this a place to spend part of your mornings.
I'm Pak Rightlow 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.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get
started.
I'd rather hear more Steve's Lava Chicken, especially delivered by an 11-year-old grandson.
Oh, I think I have that right there.
Oh, great.
Hit it.
Lava chicken, Steve's Lava Chicken.
Oh,
yeah.
Oh, yeah, that I
love.
Oh, yeah.
He's got this great vibrato.
Kid, you're going places.
I'm
telling you.
Yeah.
Yeah, Jake Bowers hit it.
Go ahead two run double in the eighth inning as the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Chicago White Sox last night six to four.
It was the Brewers third straight win.
William Contreras went two for three with an RBI to extend his hitting streak to nine games and they will wrap up the three game series and the 10 game road trip at 12.35 this afternoon across stations on the Civic Media radio network.
and have a chance to split that 10 game series, five wins, five losses with a victory today.
Again, catch the Brewers on Civic Media Stations in Hayward, Park Falls, Racine Kenosha, Oshkosh, and Richland Center.
So in talking about the prospect of a slump here, it's born of this.
There were new numbers that came out yesterday about the national economy.
For the first quarter, January, February, March, and GDP, the biggest measuring stick of the economy, it shrank.
The economy got smaller.
If you do that in two quarters in a row, that's the textbook definition of a recession.
So you don't know you're in a recession until you've gone six months and seen negative economic growth So we may very well be in one right now Not that anybody's rooting for it.
It just wasn't that hard to predict either given the approach that the current president has taken an approach that he has tried to blame on the previous president and
If you missed it yesterday, I know Todd Alba talked about it, some other folks did, brought up two different tweets from Donald Trump.
One in January before he took office when the stock market had a good day and he was taking credit going, this is a Trump stock market.
I'm not even in power yet and the markets are already responding to my coming in.
And what did we get this week from him?
This is Biden's fault.
This is Biden's stock market.
And he went on to say yesterday about the numbers.
That yes, the first quarter numbers are bad and the second quarter numbers might not be good either But that too is Joe Biden's fault.
So this guy's already seen indications of what the second quarter would look like Trying to blame Biden again Nobody's nobody's buying this the stock market just had the worst first 100 days of any president and it would be easy for a lot of folks to simply blame the president
But there's some other group of people who are quite culpable in all this.
And those, of course, would be the Republicans in the majority in the United States Congress.
And yesterday, there was a vote that could have made things better, but made things worse.
And it was a bipartisan measure.
There were three Republicans voting with all the Democrats, bringing forward a measure that would have ended the so-called emergency
that Trump declared to impose these tariffs?
Because people have been saying, wait, can a president just do this willy-nilly, just put on whatever tariffs they want?
Well, they can under certain circumstances by declaring an emergency, but Congress then has the right to go in, pass a resolution that says the emergency is over, and these tariffs have to be withdrawn.
And so the Senate and the House have had ample opportunity to do this.
But yesterday in the Senate, except for three people, Rand Paul, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins, you know, the usual suspects.
no other Republicans in there could find the spinal fortitude to say, this isn't working.
How about we as a co-equal branch of government assert a little oversight over the president?
So this is no longer just the president's thing.
It is Ron Johnson's thing as well.
He can say, as he has again recently, he's concerned about the tariffs.
He's concerned about the tariffs.
He could have done something about the tariffs yesterday and he chose not to.
And look, even if it passed the Senate,
It would die right now in Speaker Mike Johnson's house.
Mike Johnson has said that presidents should be given wide latitude on this.
I mean, he really has surrendered Congress.
He is capitulated.
But it wasn't just Mike Johnson alone.
It was Derek Van Orden, Tony Weed, Brian Stile, Scott Fitzgerald, Glenn Grossman, Tom Tiffany.
Every one of them said they will not help you.
as the economy continues its free fall toward recession.
Coming up in just over an hour, we will talk to Joseph Pecky a little bit about that as well.
Let's see, on the text line, Len in Madison seems like every break in reporting on Trump should end with more on President Trump after the break.
And he has a little fun with the word more on old Len.
Which gets back to this notion the point of bringing this up is that again as we see often in the comment section So do we have a case of Trump derangement syndrome going here?
Do we have a case of rooting for a recession?
No on both points and specifically I got a comment yesterday Saying you know, what are you guys gonna do when you're proven wrong on tariffs and that they actually work and That's an important point to make I will be happy to be wrong
And that's what we need to hear from either side of the aisle in political discourse, is I have a position, I have a view, and if I'm wrong, then I'm wrong.
But I'm not going to artificially rig the game to be right.
If this all ends with a whole bunch of countries essentially caving in to Donald Trump and getting new trade deals, if new factories start
building more cars entirely 100% in America, I'll say that I'm wrong.
I'm just betting that I won't be.
Hey, a reminder to sign up for our newsletters.
Head over to upnorthnewswi.com and get our weekday newsletter, get our Sunday morning political newsletter, and our new once a month newsletter about good stories in the world of Wisconsin sports.
Coming up next, State Representative Jody Emerson, State Senator Jeff Smith.
Thanks for spending some time here as part of your mornings.
Powered by Up North News, live from Lake Wissota on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Chances are you were just listening to Pam Yankee and the Midwest Farm Report.
Did you know the Midwest Farm Report is on for an hour every morning?
5 a.m.
on Civic Media Stations in Hayward, Oshkosh, Amory and Richland Center and the Civic Media app.
Just head to that app and tune in one of those stations and you can catch the full Midwest Farm Report weekday mornings for the hour before we get going here at 6 o'clock across the Civic Media Radio Network.
Senator Jeff Smith and Representative Jody Emerson are standing by, first one other news story to pass along out of Madison.
There actually was an investigation into the leak of a Wisconsin Supreme Court abortion order last year, but the investigators concluded that while it was likely deliberate, they were unable to determine who was responsible.
You'll recall that there are two abortion related cases before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
One is a challenge of the 1849 ban.
But the one that we're talking about here is a case that's been brought by Planned Parenthood, which is seeking a court to declare that abortion rights are protected by the state constitution.
And the people bringing the case wanted the state Supreme Court to hear it directly.
But before the state Supreme Court could issue that decision on whether they would take it up directly or not, the decision to take it up directly was leaked somehow.
And after a long and somewhat expensive investigation, it's still not clear who the leaker was.
And all seven justices simply said that this is something that was a breach of trust that the court had not experienced in its history.
And all seven justices condemned the leak.
So there's the latest on that.
That's over in the East Wing of the Capitol down in the South Wing of the Capitol.
You will find a State Senator Jeff Smith and over in the West Wing of the Capitol, you will find State Representative Jody Emerson.
You'll also find him in the Chippewa Valley and you'll also find him on this fine radio program right now.
Jeff and Jody, good morning.
How are you guys?
Good morning, Pat.
Pat.
You bet.
Let's see, you guys are both down in Madison this week.
You got business there, I assume, right?
Yes.
That's where I am.
Yes, you are.
All right.
Well, good.
We know where we're at right now.
in terms of the joint finance committee going through the state budget.
It's a two-year state budget every year.
Typically has to be done by June 30th.
We're at the part of the process where the joint finance committee has done four public hearings around the state.
Now they will come back to a room I believe in the north wing of the Capitol there.
We've covered all four corners and they will hash out what they think should be in the state budget.
Jeff, we'll start with you.
All that public comment that went into these past four hearings, all the emails that are coming in, how much good do you think it'll do for Republican leadership to adjust whatever their original plan is for the state budget?
We're hearing all sorts of things, mostly that this budget is not going to be done on time as we keep hearing from sources on the Republican side, but I really am
I really think it's important that people also know the fact that the same night that the governor released his budget, Robin Voss was quoted as saying, it's dead in the water.
It's not going to move.
We're going to create our own budget.
And the budget that they just had hearings on and hundreds of people showed up in good faith to talk about was the budget that they already have told us they're going to trash.
I think that's so disingenuous because now when they create their own budget, as is the case that we hear they're going to do, we're not going to have a public hearing on that one.
By the time it gets to it, when it comes to the floor, we will have a budget that never had a public hearing.
And I think that's really unfortunate and seems to me to be pretty undemocratic.
Yeah, really, Jody, when you think about the process and people go, well, yeah, wait, you had these four hearings all around the state.
Yeah, but we don't know what, we know what Governor Evers proposed budget is, but we don't actually know what the final Republican version of a budget bill will look like, much less be able to comment on.
Well, I mean, I think that's the problem is neither do they.
So I think we're hearing that this budget's not going to be coming on time.
And I think that's because they don't have the ideas for what they want to do yet that can keep their seats safe and also keep the communities invested in their version of Wisconsin.
You know, it's going to be devastating.
to local communities, especially school districts, our tech colleges, our universities.
If we do not get this budget done on time or shortly thereafter, I mean, it can still come in sometime early July and not impact things.
When we're talking.
August, September, October before the budget gets done, school districts have to set their budget based on what we give them as well.
And they're going to have a hard time doing that when they don't know what we're doing.
I was talking to President Rothman from the universities of Wisconsin the other day in a hearing and asked him what it would what would happen to the universities if we don't get this budget done on time.
And he said, it's very possible we would have a mid-year tuition adjustment.
I don't think I've ever heard of that before in Wisconsin or any other state.
But here
we are.
And there really isn't any good reason for it.
I mean, Republicans have been in the majority now for 14 years.
They know how this process works.
And yet, so often it seems like they're making it up as they go along.
And one area where we've certainly seen that.
has been the funding for healthcare in the Chippewa Valley after HSH closed hospitals in Eau Claire and in Chippewa Falls.
Jeff, if I'm not mistaken, if we get to the end of this current budget cycle, June 30th, and that was $5 million, hasn't been released yet by Republicans, it goes away for good unless it's put in the next state budget.
Are you hearing any indications from Republicans that they will at least roll that money over while
You know, they still fight over how the money should be applied to help out people and this health care crisis in Western Wisconsin.
$15 million is in the current budget 15 and and just yesterday, as a matter of fact, in a hearing on a different subject, our co chair Howard Markline was presenting a bill that he wants us to pass and actually fix something that he screwed up last time.
And I said, why should we fix?
I asked him, why should we fix something for you now?
How can I trust you?
Because you have not moved that $15 million to the chip valley that was intended.
And I slid down to the table a list of 10 instances when the Joint Finance Committee has done that exact thing on a 1310 request from an agency that they claim is illegal.
He ignored me.
and got walked out of the room.
So we're in a position where the Republicans do not want to help the Chippewa Valley.
Here's a note from Alicia on YouTube who did attend the hearing in Warsaw.
I asked a GOP legislator what he wants to see in the budget.
I kid you not, he said, I don't know.
We'll have to see what Republicans write up, meaning his leadership, meaning that, you know, there's so very little input that it's whatever Robin Voss and Devin Lemmehu want to put in.
And look, again, I've been there.
Russ Decker was the majority leader during my time there, and the majority leader has a lot of sway over what goes in it.
But I don't recall ceding everything to the majority leader and saying, well, you just tell me what to vote on.
I will.
I don't know, Jody, maybe that's just a thing with Democrats where it's like, no, you're not just going to give us marching orders.
Well, we hear this on the floor every single floor session.
Robin Voss will get up and do this impassioned speech about how the Democrats are just going to vote no on this.
And they're not going to, you know, you're just going to listen to exactly what your leader says.
And obviously, he's never been in one of our closed caucuses before.
If he thinks that we just listen without argument and discussion to what leadership says.
But I think it tells a lot about how he expects his caucus to run.
So that's not how it works on our side.
We definitely have spirited debates.
We usually come to an agreement overall.
But there's never been a time where I've ever heard anybody in my leadership say, you vote for this or else.
And in
fact, Jeff, you probably missed it, but earlier I was sharing the full story of the debate over the smoking ban in 2007 and how there was nothing along party lines on that debate whatsoever.
It was everybody for themselves.
It was spirited.
It wasn't free for all.
I've never had so many, you know, fellow Democrats, you know, just want to vilify me for trying to find a compromise.
And in hindsight now.
That's almost refreshing, as opposed to just the marching orders that we've been seeing for the past 14 years.
So,
Okay.
And the thing of it is, with a smaller majority, Clint Moses and others, you know, it would only take a handful to actually, you know, bring the caucus to a halt and say, no, no, no, we want to consider this, for example,
an extension of postpartum care under Medicaid, where, again, Jodi, if I'm not mistaken, we're talking to Jodi Emerson, state representative here from Eau Claire and Senator Jeff Smith.
Jodi, I think you almost have a majority of the assembly itself that is a co-sponsor of this measure, and it's just Robin Voss, the speaker, single-handedly holding it up.
Yeah, well, that bill passed the Senate, I think,
32 to
one.
And it's now in the assembly hands.
The last time I counted, and people can always add their names at any point, we had 66 out of 99 co-sponsors of that bill.
That bill will pass if we bring it up.
Somehow, for some reason, Robin Voss is the one person who is standing in the way of this.
Well, and he says, well, there's other people who are opposed to it too, but they're just making me, they're making me take all the heat for it.
Yeah, but again, 66 co-sponsors.
need 50.
Should tell you something right there.
Let me switch gears to the federal budget for a moment, because I know we had something that just impacted the Chippewa Valley, and that was the cutting of AmeriCorps volunteers at the Beaver Creek Reserve and throughout the community.
Jody, when I think of waste, fraud, and abuse in a federal budget, I do not think of the Beaver Creek Reserve and community volunteers.
Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what was, you know, equitable, inclusive, and diversified about Beaver Creek Reserve other than maybe the diversity of the flora and fauna that are there.
But AmeriCorps volunteers do some amazing stuff.
They're helping teach people how to read.
They're in our communities doing, you know, things with kids to make sure that they've got summer programs and stuff.
Without warning all of a sudden the ones Beaver Creek Reserve is one of the examples in my district where I think they lost five AmeriCorps volunteers at the snap of a finger.
There's like 400 of them around the state that lost their jobs this week.
What I don't understand about the way that the federal government is doing this is
with the fanno snap of a finger, they're changing things.
Why are
they not letting people...
go through the end of their contract.
Right.
Or be determining.
Be more of a fine tooth comb to look for the the actual waste, fraud and abuse.
State Representative Jody Emerson from Eau Claire State Senator Jeff Smith from Eau Claire County talking to us more about the state budget process.
Coming up in our eight o'clock hour is Joseph Pecky.
Hey, remember, you can follow my team at Up North News all day long through our newsletter, social media and our website, UpNorthNewsWI.com.
and of course right here mornings on the Civic Media Radio Network.
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
Tomorrow on the program, of course, it's Friday.
We'll have our Week in Review panel with former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel, journalist Mark Jacob and Jennifer Schulze, Courier Newsroom's Keev Akeel from Los Angeles, and also Dr. Kristen Lierly will be joining us as well.
She does now on Friday mornings with a reminder that you can catch her on Saturdays with her own show now, the Dr. Kristen Lierly Show.
Head over to civicmedia.us.
for more details.
Continuing now with State Senator Jeff Smith and State Representative Jody Emerson from the Chippewa Valley.
And now yesterday in Eau Claire, there was a sit-in of sorts at Congressman Derek Van Orden's office and about the budget cuts and things like that.
There will be more demonstrations today against what the Trump administration is doing in cities around Wisconsin.
including in Hayward where it's also going to be a demonstration in support of Judge Monica Isham for the heat that she's taking for wanting clarification on whether there's still going to be all these you know ice arrests you know outside of judges courtrooms and things like that.
All of this is to say Jeff and Jody that the the demonstrations in Eau Claire, Chippewa Falls, Hayward throughout the state have been
peaceful, have been productive.
They certainly have helped people.
If you look at Donald Trump's polling numbers, you understand that people are unhappy about this.
And that that has to be a pretty good feeling, Jody, to have seen this much done in terms of public displays of opposition to something without any kind of hiccups.
Let's just say it's no January 6th out there.
They're not just tourists enjoying the Capitol or anything like that.
No, I
think
I think it's important to use your voice in ways that we can, you know, and people are doing this on a regular basis, but they're also doing it, you know, angrily, but peacefully.
So it is, and for people to compare, when I look at the protests that I see around the state,
And then I look at what happened on January 6th.
Nobody's climbing in the windows at Derrick Van Orden's office.
They're walking through the door.
They're sitting down in the hallways.
You know, I think people are so desperate to get their voices heard that they're willing to do anything to connect with their with their congressmen.
Well, they're focused on the issues as opposed to January 6, which was about taking power.
So, Jeff, I mean, same same question to you about the fact that people feel strongly enough about issues, that that is the message rather than just, you know, demonstrating for the sake of demonstrating.
Well, they
This, of course, for folks that don't know, Senator Smith has a big red truck with a big red sign and he parks along various roads randomly.
And it's just a stop and talk where you can stop and talk to your state senator.
That's all they want.
They just want to be heard like Jody says.
And, you know, it's actually such a shame.
It is just a shame that Republicans right now across the country
are silent, hiding.
Even at the state level here, it is, I don't even know how to, I cannot make excuses for the Republican colleagues that I work with right now who are silent and hiding.
And just standing on the sideline watching all this happen and not speaking up.
I'm a little concerned though about this thing that you mentioned off the top that the state budget may actually be late and I wonder how much of that is because of their demand that Governor Evers agreed to some kind of a tax cut package like separately before rather than you know putting it in the budget bill where Evers could could could play with the line item veto and craft it one way or the other Jody is that what this is
basically centered on is Republican insistence on tax cuts or are there other reasons why they can't seem to pull it together and get a budget done on time?
Well, I think there's multiple things that are going on.
There's them wanting tax cuts and wanting to do it separately from the budget, which doesn't happen.
It happens.
Tax cuts are a budget item, so it needs to happen within the budget.
I think the other piece of it though too is the fact that
We have to base our budget off of what we're getting from the federal government or what government programs are covering from the federal government.
You know, and and if all of a sudden.
You know, they do away with Medicaid, which is on the table at the federal government.
We're going to have to do some fancy footwork here at the state to make sure that we have these people covered and, you know, they're not dying because they're left out without a nursing home.
They're left without personal care and things like that.
So I think it's hard for us to set our budget when we don't know what's going on.
And then the other piece is there's a couple of pretty big cases before the Supreme Court, one we already know with the 400 year veto.
that I think they were waiting to figure out what could happen before they wanted to do the budget.
So, all that to say, get a move on it.
People are waiting.
This is kind of our one job that we really have to do every two years.
And- That's it.
One job.
Yeah.
One job.
We have one job.
We gotta finish this.
Jeff's gotta get back to his farm, you know, in the
old Clark
County town of Brunswick.
What are you doing on the farm?
What are you missing out on there while you're working on the budget, Jeff?
yeah.
You know what?
We'll cover that later on when Farmer Jeff gives us the update from the farm there.
But if you want to know more about the issues in the Chippewa Valley, these are the two people to talk to, State Senator Jeff Smith and State Representative Jody Emerson.
Thank you guys very much for the for the capital update.
As always, appreciate it.
Good to see
you Pat.
All right.
Thank you very much.
All right.
When we have a little news break and then come back, Brittany Merlot is going to tell us an update on the weather forecast coming up.
And then Joseph Pecky will be along in the next hour.
And we're going to talk more about members of Congress not being able to just say, well, this is this is Donald Trump's mess.
And you know, we're powerless to handle it.
They're not powerless to handle it, as people were saying at Derek Van Orden's office yesterday in Eau Claire.
There's a role to be played, but you've got to have members of Congress from Wisconsin that want to play a role.
Thanks for joining us here.
Live from Lake Wissota on the Civic Media Radio Network, as we do every morning.
I'm Pat Rightlow.
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.
