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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, from our Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
All right, the second cup of coffee's been poured, so good morning.
It is 7.06, and it is nice to have you here up north on this Thursday morning, May 22nd.
We've got Michelle Velazquez from Planned Parenthood Advocates standing by to talk to us about the dangers of the budget cuts being proposed by...
Donald Trump and congressional Republicans on Medicaid on health care and more in our second half hour here We'll be talking to a gentleman from Dane County who helps get people enrolled for Medicaid and snap food assistance benefits.
He's
Gone to Washington DC this week to try to persuade congressional Republicans not to make these dangerous cuts to people's vital services for health care, for nutrition and more.
But as we've learned in the past hour, the House of Representatives, by one of the narrowest of margins, did pass their so-called big beautiful bill and sent it on to the Senate with
punishing cuts to all of these programs and more.
It will no doubt be altered by Republicans who control the U.S.
Senate, but some kind of punishing cuts will be there nonetheless to fund billionaire tax cuts.
And we'll talk to Michelle Velazquez and Zab Martinez throughout the course of this hour more about that.
Then in our eight o'clock hour, we will be talking to Joseph Peckie, a candidate for a state Democratic Party chair.
We are doing that back to back to back.
We talked to Devon Remaker yesterday.
We'll talk to William Garcia tomorrow, all in our eight o'clock hour.
Also coming up in today's eight o'clock hour, Sean O'Malley will talk to us about money and markets.
And we'll check in with Chad Holmes as well for stories that he's following for civic media in the Warsaw area.
So much ahead, but let's first turn our attention to meteorologist, Brittany Merlot, who look at that smile she's got.
You can tell the sun is out.
Pat's not going to yell anymore.
Gorgeous out there.
Greg's playing the harp.
He actually brings one into the studio.
It's crazy.
Yep.
And so here we are
on a sun splashed Thursday morning, Brittany.
Good morning.
Oh, good morning.
That sun splashed.
Oh, yes, that sounds so good.
And that's exactly what's happening out there.
If you don't have it in full force just yet down south, don't worry.
It's headed your way.
I don't see a cloud in the sky right now in the central Wisconsin.
It is a little bit more cloudy though, down south.
We do still have a frost advisory in effect until nine o'clock this morning, far up north.
Temperatures are at 30 degrees into Ashland and Superior.
Yeah.
below freezing.
We're still going to see some cold nights ahead as this clear skies take over.
It's 48 degrees right now into Kenosha, and it's going to be partly sunny throughout the entire day today.
We are going to hit highs in those mid to upper fifties.
But of course, more scattered frost is possible north.
We've got a ton of sunshine still tomorrow for Saturday for Sunday.
Maybe a few more clouds out there Monday and a chance of showers, but dry conditions and slowly warming temperatures.
We will hit those sixties all across the state as soon as tomorrow.
We're going to keep rising a few degrees every single day, and then we'll be in the upper sixties by Memorial Day.
All right, from Robin Tigerton.
Good morning.
It's sunny and 41 degrees.
We picked up three quarters of an inch of rain from Tuesday through last night between breaks.
I got four yards mowed in Tigerton and got five more to do today.
The farmer that leases my family farm told me the recent cool weather has the hay crop yields a little lower because of those recent cooler temperatures.
Rob apparently is liking the daily history lesson because he says that Greg and I are Wisconsin's version of Casey Kasem.
Well, thank you very much.
And I love that word.
And let's see, Rob says he's got six more yards to do today, but that Brittany is always sunshine every day.
Thank you.
Thank
you so much, Rob.
That was so nice.
We're going to do this again.
And in terms of, you know, again, talking about music history, especially now with Parker Olson joining the show here, Alicia says, anyone my kid's age makes me feel old right now.
And Cassandra says, hey, Alicia, my oldest, it's only seven and it makes me feel old.
So the fact that Tony's writing up a national and that Parker is making him feel old just warms my heart.
to know that it's just all part of the circle of life here.
We've got, you know what, maybe I'll run this one by Brittany over here.
We were talking about musical remakes.
And which one did I just ask you about?
It was a Gwen Stefani song from Shizu there, right, Parker?
Oh yeah, here it is.
Shizu says, kind of like Gwen Stefani's Rich Girl is a remake from Fiddler on the Roof.
She
samples.
Yeah.
She's like, Oh, yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
She doesn't
cover it, but she uses the music as the bedrock of the track.
Oh, like it's blown.
I didn't know that.
I see.
I love these little musical nuggets.
Oh, I could drop this
all day.
Oh,
you know, there is this line between sampling.
and plagiarism.
Okay.
And nobody can say clearly where the line is for any given song, but when, when sampling is done right, absolutely love it.
But there's other songs where you go, Oh, you're just ripping off this other person.
You know,
looking at you, the strokes, what?
Parker, do you not agree with that?
I think he's looking around for the strokes
right now.
Oh, okay.
And
I'm sure I'm going to get a message from Luca and what do you mean?
Cause I bet you Luke loves the strokes.
I'll bet that's part of his cover band.
He probably sings a lot of those.
Brittany, thank you.
We'll get another update in our next hour.
Sounds good.
All right.
Along the way, you can join the show 855-75-CIVIC-855-7524842.
You can also use the Civic Media app to call the show, text the show, and now we are just introducing a fresh new feature on the Civic Media app, Voice Notes.
So you can again, you know type in a message to us or you can call live But if you want to leave us something But you don't want to talk live on the phone on the radio use the voice note feature go to any one of the radio stations where we're on and Hit that voice note and you can record a short voice message to us And if we if we like it if you're making a good point if you're asking a good question We'll pop that up on the radio as well.
So again part of the civic media app at 713 let's
talk a bit more about what is being proposed by congressional Republicans, President Trump, Elon Musk, and others who, and I cannot say this enough times, are making massive spending cuts that are not designed to offset harm to the national debt.
They're not designed to put money back into the pocket of middle-class Americans, because if either one of those things were happening, there might be more public support for them, but they're not.
All of these cuts that are being made are going to help pay for more tax cuts for the very wealthy and blow up the debt and the budget deficit.
So what's it going to do to real folks?
Michelle Velasquez joins us now from Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin and we'll be talking in the next half hour with a benefit specialist talking specifically about Medicaid and SNAP and the way folks would be hurt in Wisconsin as well.
Michelle, hello.
How are you?
Good morning.
I'm okay.
All things considered.
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, when you look at, you know, the, the totality, I mean, the, the numbers are staggering in terms of, you know, what, what would be the number of people that would be losing Medicaid who'd lose coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
So many other things from a Planned Parenthood health care standpoint.
I know you're certainly running the numbers on how harmful this would be.
Absolutely.
There is actually a specific provision in this bill that would defund Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and all Planned Parenthoods who provide abortion care around the country in places where it has remained legal.
And that is because there is a provision that specifically would prohibit Medicaid reimbursement for health services, although unrelated to abortion.
prohibit that reimbursement to nonprofit family planning providers that also provide abortion care.
So in Wisconsin, that would really jeopardize Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin's ability to continue to provide the extensive care that it currently does to about 50 to 60,000 patients annually at 21 health centers across the state.
And that is a point that really needs to be made.
I think repeatedly is that because so many people have tried to equate Planned Parenthood with only abortion services, that there is so much more to it and that the federal funds that we're talking about here are not, it doesn't sound to me like they're going to stop one abortion, that this is all about all of the other health care services that Planned Parenthood provides.
Absolutely.
Federal and state Medicaid dollars in Wisconsin already do not fund abortion.
So those dollars are never used to reimburse for abortion care.
However, what they are used for is to ensure that people across the state in rural communities, in underserved communities, communities without access to affordable quality health care can get birth control, STI testing and treatment.
cancer screenings, well, women's visits, all of the sort of what I would consider basic health care that everybody deserves to have access to.
And that's really what's at stake here.
And this isn't just women as well that receive basic health care services from Planned Parenthood.
Absolutely.
All people, men, women, non-binary people,
People from all communities, all walks of life are always welcome at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, and they receive excellent, high quality expert care in sexual reproductive health.
And in fact, defunding Planned Parenthood would save no money to the federal government and would actually end up costing the federal government more money.
And the reason is because people will go without health care.
They'd go without birth control.
So there would be
potentially STI that would go and treated that need more extensive treatment down the road or that lead to other health issues.
There would be unplanned pregnancies that people would then be forced to continue because they don't have access to abortion care or they didn't have access to birth control.
And now there are additional costs, of course, related to those types of things, cancers that go undetected and then need more treatment.
People going to emergency rooms or urgent care departments rather than
seeking those health care services at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin where they're currently receiving that care.
Now, people who think of Planned Parenthood as just these urban clinics in a few city centers, we know what the rural health care crisis is like.
And I would make a safe bet that your patient base is not restricted to folks who live in the cities where your clinics are located.
That's absolutely correct.
We have Planned Parenthood, Wisconsin has 21 health centers across the state.
There's a health center in Eau Claire, La Crosse, Green Bay, a few in the Fox Valley, Wisconsin Rapids.
And there's a virtual health center so people can access quite a lot of care through telehealth services.
So the reach is very, very wide across the state.
We were talking to Michelle Velasquez from Planned Parenthood Advocates about the punishing cuts that are being put in place and how they would impact things like Medicaid and services that are provided.
And again, we're talking about this from a Wisconsin standpoint, but you would know that Planned Parenthood services nationwide.
I mean, it's just got to be a staggering number of people who would be impacted if this current budget were to pass as is.
Absolutely.
There's nearly 200 health centers operated by various Planned Parenthood affiliates across the country, and this defund would result in more than a million people losing access to health care.
We will be talking more in our next half hour about some of the other cuts being made by Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress on Wisconsin families who are in need of food assistance and stable and affordable health care.
That's all ahead yet here on the program this morning.
Quick check of sports at 7.19.
Before we take a break, there were some ninth inning heroics yesterday at American Family Field.
It wasn't quite enough as the Brewers fell to Baltimore eight to four in 11 innings.
The Brewers are on the verge of losing.
three to two, but a bottom of the ninth RBI single by Caleb Durbin sent the game to extras in the 10th.
Baltimore pulled ahead, but the Brewers tied it again on a Jackson Churio RBI single.
But then in the 11th, the Orioles got to pitcher Tyler Alexander with a three run homer and one more for good measure.
The Brewers now travel to Pittsburgh and the.
Pre-game coverage will begin at 5.05 on several Civic Media stations.
Head over to CivicMedia.us to learn much more.
From the heart of America's Up North, live from Lake Wissota, thanks for making this the place to spend part of your mornings.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is 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.
Hey, while I was away on vacation, here's something that happened over at our website, UpNorthNewsWI.com, this year's edition of the Madison Food Guide dropped.
Now, I know people are gonna go, what's Up North News?
You're just supposed to talk about, no, I don't know, we are, all of Wisconsin is America's Up North.
And so we talk about all things Wisconsin, and we have a whole lot of readers and listeners in the Madison area.
And a feature that we started sometime back that was especially popular was a Madison food guide.
So that's been all redone and updated for 2025.
And so what you do is you go to the website up North news wi.com and then up on top there where there's all little subsections and everything, click on the one that says local.
And under that local, you'll see Madison Food Guide, and it is article after article, the best cheese curds, the best restaurants overall, where to find the best ice cream, who makes the best pizza, who makes the best old fashioned, where are the most breathtaking views in Madison?
The best bar food.
So the Madison Food Guide is out.
Head over to UpNorthNewsWI.com to learn all about that.
Let's continue our conversation now with Michelle Velazquez from Planned Parenthood Advocates.
We're talking about what
Congress is considering what the House has just passed and the massive cuts to Medicaid and to health care services that would be included in all of this.
There was earlier from Wisconsin 28 state legislators
who signed a letter calling on Congress to oppose these efforts and outlined all of the ways that people rely on Planned Parenthood as an entry point to healthcare, the tens of thousands of people that would be involved.
And Michelle, this is something that is not new to Planned Parenthood in terms of providing basic healthcare.
This is something you've been doing for decades.
Absolutely.
Planned Parenthood, Wisconsin has been around for 90 years.
And this is certainly not the first time that it has faced attacks.
And it's still standing 90 years later.
And certainly we intend to fight every single day and work really hard to continue to be able to provide all of these.
essential health services that really help communities thrive.
I mean, people need these really basic health cares to live healthy lives, to be able to pursue their passions in life, whatever it is that they want to do.
So things like birth control and cancer screenings and just being able to remain healthy is really an essential part of a healthy community.
And so while these attacks will
would be absolutely devastating to that infrastructure.
I know that Planned Parenthood Wisconsin is not going anywhere, but the extents of the care that we can provide may have to look really different.
This is a really, really serious threat, not just in Wisconsin and not just for Planned Parenthood, right?
Like this is about all other
healthcare and as you're going to talk to somebody in a little bit, SNAP benefits.
So just these really basic essential things that our government ought to be investing in with tax dollars are likely to go away.
And as you mentioned at the top of the hour, not to put back in the pockets of Americans, but to essentially fund bigger tax breaks for the Uber wealthy.
And that's the thing.
It's not like the savings are going back into the middle class.
And they're doing this despite knowing that they're going against the grain of where most Americans' values are and where public opinion is.
Planned Parenthood as consistently, you know, pulled as being more popular than many elected officials or parties and that people consistently do not want politicians interfering in their health care.
And cuts like this are certainly a big way of doing that.
One in three women have been to a Planned Parenthood health center for care, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
And, you know, some 77% of people oppose taking away funds for birth control people with low incomes.
And that includes, by the way,
63% of Trump voters in one poll there there really is nothing mainstream Michelle about what this Congress is doing right now
You're absolutely right.
I mean people
share, I think there's a lot of common values that people have across the political spectrum.
And one is that they want their family, their friends and people in their community to have access to affordable, high quality healthcare at all the stages of their life when their children, when their teenagers, when their young adults entering some of their first
relationships and, you know, as they get older as well.
And so, you know, we can talk about the Planned Parenthood part, which obviously impacts, so I might think of it sort of the younger group of people, but these Medicaid cuts really are going to have devastating effects across the board and in all the different types of health care infrastructure.
And I'm trying to think if there's any
if there's any way that people would have other options for their healthcare but you're basically the only source for a lot of folks or in a lot of areas and that there's just not going to be any place for people to go except for as you said earlier increase the amount of uncompensated care that's out there or people delaying their care.
Absolutely.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin really serves sometimes as an entry point into a healthcare system.
So oftentimes we are seeing people who don't have an established, really an established healthcare provider.
And sometimes, you know, Planned Parenthood Wisconsin's nurses and doctors are detecting things that people need to be connected to a specialist for.
And so really, that's that really important entry point.
And sometimes Planned Parenthood is the only health care provider that people are seeing.
And there just isn't another health system in Wisconsin, another safety net health system that is going to be able to absorb the number of patients.
So these patients are really just not going to get health care.
You know, our public health departments are also having their funds cut earlier this year.
Title 10 funding was cut.
Title 10, for those who might not know, is a federal pot of money for family planning.
And again, on and on the spillover effect that we will track in the coming months, we shouldn't have to do that.
But the impact, tracing the impact is what's coming up next.
Chief Strategy Officer Michelle Velazquez, good to talk to you.
Thank you so much for the update.
We appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
All right, still ahead, Sean O'Malley with Markets and Money, Joseph Peckie, another check of the forecast with Brittany Merlot, all after the Midwest Farm Report here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress try to make massive cuts to safety net programs in order to give the wealthiest people and companies more tax breaks.
They're doing so under the phony cover of attacking so-called waste, fraud, and abuse.
Now, that's not to say there isn't some level of misuse in any program.
Same could be said in your workplace.
But that doesn't mean you fire a chunk of the workforce in order to give the CEO a bigger paycheck.
But the truth is that a lot of Americans are hurting for a variety of reasons, and instead of providing more jobs or more job training or opportunities for education or help with childcare or health care costs, the response from Trump and Republicans to all these financially struggling families is, well, too bad.
Our friends need the money.
We talked to someone who helps process SNAP and Medicaid eligibility for struggling families in Wisconsin.
He traveled to Washington this week to give members of the state's congressional delegation an insider's view of how these massive cuts would impact real people in our state.
My name is Opdale Martinez.
My job is I'm a SNAP and Medicaid eligibility specialist.
The official title is Economic Support Specialist
and I do
that in Dane County, Wisconsin.
At what point do you have your first point of contact with somebody and then tell me how the process is supposed to work?
There's four ways you can apply.
You can apply the paper format.
You can apply over the phone.
You can apply on the online website that they have or come into a local agency and apply in person.
When you apply, we ask for verification of income, depending on if there's an immigration status.
So if they're not a US citizen, we ask to verify immigration status.
Once we verify the income for SNAP, we look at utilities and expenses.
After going through all that and dumping through all those hoops, every case is always different.
After all that though, we go ahead and review their income.
If they're under or above, or excuse me, above or below the income limits, if they're below, they would be eligible and we would be able to get them set up for the SNAP benefits, for Medicaid and items like that.
And if they don't qualify, we give them resources to the local areas where they could look for alternative care, free clinics, go to the marketplace.
the Affordable Care Act and you know just kind of give them a couple other options that way.
How is it conveyed to people when they first come to you that this this is temporary relief designed to help get you through a tough time and that this is not
Something that would necessarily be a permanent state.
I mean it may be for say Medicaid disability and things like that But especially snapper for people who are newly unemployed is that how is that conveyed that this is you know in a perfect world meant to be a temporary bridge to better times
You know when it comes to the to snap and Medicaid it really comes to a point where
you know, you have people who from all backgrounds are applying, right?
You can see people who just lost their jobs applying.
You can see people who may have not have applied in years and are re-applying after five, six, seven years since they last received the benefit.
It really depends on the situation people are going through.
And you have a family of five where both mom and dad are working full-time and still can't afford their groceries.
And if they have insurance to their job, the cost of that insurance to have for their kids is too high for them where they can't afford it.
And so Medicaid kind of fills in that gap where they can get the Medicaid for their children, despite them working both full-time.
But it's to a point where
if it becomes unaffordable, if they can't afford food after working full-time or healthcare, you know, is it really temporary or, you know, it comes to kind of a point where they have to kind of rely on that?
Well, especially yes for the children and for their health.
So this whole notion that we're hearing the need for all these cuts because there's waste from all these folks who are otherwise employable, it seems to me that that
really misses how unstable families are economically around, you know, around Wisconsin and around the country.
And I wonder if you share that sense of economic instability that a lot of families are experiencing.
You know, it's kind of interesting to hear those phrases, you know, because I try to look at it kind of based on my experience, you know, I've helped
So I've been doing this job for a year.
And before that, I would work at a hospital to help people apply for Medicaid.
I was at a company.
It wasn't through the state or the county or anything.
And I would see people in many different situations where they don't have insurance or they just lost their insurance.
And they have to pay, let's just say, around about $20,000 for appendix, for ER visit.
it comes to a point where when you're in the hospital, you're recovering and things like that and you can't work, you're not able to work because everyone's body recovers differently.
If you can't work for X amount of weeks or months, depending on your situation,
you know, on paper, yeah, maybe it looks like you can work, but in reality you can't because of your health, because of this, because of that.
So that's what I try to focus on the most when I hear those words abroad and being able to work.
It's just like, it's an individual basis, you know, it's really just the need people have at some point.
there was a phrase that I used a lot when I was campaigning that there are just so many people in Wisconsin who are one illness one accident or one layoff away from poverty and it has always appeared to me that there is a certain group of folks in the country and in the state that
don't want to believe that that many families really are that close, that one accident, one injury, one illness, one layoff would make that big a difference.
Do you see that on a regular basis?
I would say yes.
I mean, I can say, you know, a couple weeks ago I've gotten calls from
a young person who had some savings and they waited until the last minute to apply for SNAP benefits.
There's people who didn't expect to lose their jobs over the winter and all of a sudden they got their last paycheck, they got paid good money and all of a sudden they don't have...
insurance.
They don't have food security anymore for the next month and the following month because who knows how long it takes for them to get their job.
And so, you know, and kind of adding on to what you were saying, Pat, you know, not just that, I think in reality, we're just two or three paychecks away from having to make decisions of, do we decide to pay for food or do we decide to take our children to the doctor?
Do we decide to buy this necessity for our transportation or do we decide, you know, to buy dinner for tonight?
So, you know, kind of adding on to that, you know,
It really doesn't take that long for us to find ourselves in a situation where we would need to apply for these programs.
When you do that as a SNAP eligibility specialist, and again, I say this as somebody who grew up on what you would call food stamps with a single mom back in the day there.
you hear that there's this potential for billions, maybe even a couple hundred billion dollars in cuts to SNAP and other nutritional assistance programs.
I mean, such a big number, I don't think registers at the human level with a lot of people.
If that were to really happen, what would be the human toll do you think around where you live and around Wisconsin and the country?
Where to begin on that?
I mean, just looking at SNAP specifically, the max for a single household, one person in the home is $292 a month, right?
So a little bit less than $300.
And that's in a perfect world where you can get the max.
So going off that and looking at the income, looking at your expenses, you qualify for the max allotment, having these cuts for people who are already receiving the benefit or
kind of taking it just that further where you have people who never thought themselves as needing that benefit, now having that door closed to them.
You're taking away food security for those people.
You're taking away health insurance security.
And with that, they go from a state of surviving to just barely surviving or even lower than that.
There are people who don't qualify for that.
The minimum we can give is 23.
So if you qualify for SNAP benefits,
But the only amount, after jumping all those hoops, you only qualify for $23.
What can that get you at that
point?
Having those cuts would basically make millions of Americans vulnerable to food insecurity through having lack of health insurance and thinking about what that impact could have on going through Wisconsin, right?
The impact of those people who rely on that benefit for their children, their children aren't going to be able to get checkups.
They're not going to be able to get food.
They're not going to be able to go to the doctor.
You have cases where they have a serious illness and have to go to the ER.
The parents are going to be stuck with that medical bill.
So the impacts, just even thinking about it locally, are scary to even think about.
You have decided to go to Washington and talk to
members of the Wisconsin Congressional delegation about this, that included Senator Baldwin's office, and meeting with Congressman Mark Polkhan.
So let's start with them.
Do you feel like Congressman Polkhan gets it when it comes to the dangers of that level of cuts?
So when we met with Mark Polkhan, you know, it was, and I think of it like kind of like, you know,
being kind of just learning even in a deeper level how government works but when I met with him you know as soon as we started talking I shared my story you know and likewise goes with uh Senator Baldwin's office you know they were both on board that these cuts should not be made they were both saying no we shouldn't be seeing we shouldn't be having these cuts in general and that kind of reinforced you know my I would say
Trust or I guess you know kind of confirmed, you know the thoughts that Wisconsin has as a whole I guess you could say, you know I don't speak for everybody but just hearing that from our representatives from our congressman,
you know It
really it really shows to me like at least they they're they're listening to what what what their citizens are saying what their people are
saying.
I understand that you
tried to reach out to Congressman Derek Van Orden as well.
Have you heard anything back yet about potentially informing him or a staffer about your view on how bad these cuts could affect people?
We did reach out and attempt to schedule a meeting, but we haven't heard anything back.
We have heard from the Congressman, though, that he quite angrily denies that any
cuts made in the House Agriculture Committee to nutritional supplement programs would hurt regular folks.
He has repeatedly framed it as going after waste fraud, bureaucracy, abuse, things like that.
I ask you as somebody who admittedly you've been at this for like you said a year or so, but do you look at this and say
My gosh, there is so much waste, fraud, and abuse under SNAP benefits that I totally see how Congress can find a couple hundred billion dollars to cut.
Or do you not see such a massive level of waste, fraud, and abuse?
You know, whenever I think of the words and I hear those words coming from people forward and saying, oh, waste, fraud, abuse in these programs, you know, it really comes to a point where.
with the overall economic impact of just not having these programs, right?
If this were a program that was being abused, that was being taken advantage of, you know, my thinking is how would cuts better this program?
Because in reality, the purpose of these programs are clear.
You have the overall economic impact that we discussed earlier of people having to make that decision of, can they afford to go out to eat?
Can they afford to pay for a repair in their car?
Always happens at the worst times.
Can they afford to do XYZ thing?
Or do they have to make a decision to go to the doctor?
There's times where when people say, oh, there's waste, fraud, and abuse, when in reality, it's just people looking for help.
And that's what I see the most is people looking for help, looking for that assistance that they would need.
And so when they say that, you know, it doesn't come to mind because in reality, it's just people looking for help in these difficult times.
Zeb, we appreciate that very much.
Thank you for spending some time with us.
Thank you.
It was a pleasure to be here, Pat.
Zeb Martinez of Dane County, working with AFSCME and urging others to contact their members of Congress to oppose cuts to struggling families.
I'm Pat Critello.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Tomorrow on the program, Keva Keel from Courier Newsroom with more reaction to the House budget plan that passed this morning.
Former US Attorney Jim Santel will be part of our Week in Review panel along with journalists Jennifer Schulze and Mark Jacob.
One of the stories I know we'll talk about is how the Chicago Sun Times got egg on its face by putting out a book, a summer reading book list, recommended books.
The whole thing was generated by AI and included a lot of books that don't exist.
So we'll talk about newsrooms and their reliance on artificial quote-unquote intelligence.
If you missed it earlier the Democratic Party of Wisconsin announced that at their state convention next month in Wisconsin tells the keynote speaker will be Georgia Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock.
He'll be speaking there on June 14th.
The convention is a Saturday and Sunday, June 14th and 15th, and we will continue in our next hour our conversations with the three candidates to be the new state Democratic Party chair.
Matt and Aaron air is coming up just over an hour from now.
Greg Bach will be working feverishly between now and then.
Yep.
Put a show on for us.
What are you and Jane brewing now?
All right now we've got it's Thursday So it's always gonna be a packed show on Thursday at 9 35 we welcome Jim Santel who's the host of Amicus a law review which you can listen to every Saturday here on the civic media radio network He talks about all the news that has to do with the law and it's always something going on and then it at 10 20 we have got
Civic media's meteorologists and multi award winner, Brittany Merleau here to do some weather and wine talking about the weather coming up this weekend as well as a lot of twisters happening.
But, and then we, we, we got Paul Noonan at 1030 doing sports and then this shouldn't be a thing at 1050.
It is a packed pack show Pat.
My
goodness it is.
And then tomorrow for folks who would like to score some free tickets to see the Brewers at American Family Field.
Just be listening to your favorite civic media shows on Fridays throughout the baseball season.
Listen for keywords.
You'll be texting them in for a chance to win a four pack of Brewer's tickets.
Complete rules can be found at the Civic Media website.
But yeah, you'll text it in through the Civic Media app and Greg, that app has a cool new feature, which was
wonderfully described by somebody who sent us the first ever one of these doohickeys.
And here, much like the phone was started with Alexander Graham Bell going, Dr. Watson, come quick, I need you, here is our moment for voice notes on the morning show.
Voice notes.
Who knew?
Somebody had to try it first.
Somebody had to break it in.
So to that listener from WA UK, thank you very much for that.
Hey, for a television news industry in a constant state of motion, I never thought I'd be uttering these words.
Deborah Norville has been a model of stability.
She began hosting Inside Edition in 1995, remained there ever since, and that 30 year run came to a close last night.
this is truly in the too young for Parker department here.
But from 1989 to 1991, Debra Norville was at the Today Show.
And it was such a soap opera that NBC
did nothing to to help themselves with when it appeared that Debra Norville the then what 34 year old telegenic newcomer appeared to be pushing veteran anchor Jane Pauley out the door and Jane Pauley did then finally
then did finally leave.
Debra Norville became co-anchor, the ratings plunged, and pretty soon Debra Norville was replaced by Katie Couric.
Debra Norville eventually found her way to Inside Edition, becoming the show's only their second permanent anchor after who, Mr.
Bach?
Darn it.
Bill O'Reilly.
Oh, that's right.
Oh,
yeah.
Well, we're doing it live.
Why did I?
What did?
Didn't Maury Povich host
a show like that?
A current affair.
A current affair.
Darn it.
Yep.
There were all these tabloid-y things that came up back then.
I said
it was such confidence, too.
I
know.
So we're doing it live.
We're signing off for that.
So I just wanted to mention that one as well.
I also wanted to ask you guys, if you think
And we see this.
We see things in the comments sections all the time about, you know, migrants and immigrants.
And I always want to ask them, do you think you could pass a U.S.
citizenship quiz?
Me?
Yeah, I think so.
Yes.
You think you could?
Yeah.
OK.
I'm
pretty sure that when I was like finishing high school, I had to take it.
What?
I think that was like part of our history class.
Yeah.
Interesting.
OK.
All right.
Well, I'm going to ask you some questions here.
Oh, no.
And and that's okay.
It's it's an easy curve.
You there's 10 questions and you got to get six to pass.
Okay.
It's pretty low bar here.
Name one of the two longest rivers in the United States.
The Mississippi.
Mississippi.
Name another one.
Too long.
The
Mississippi.
Ohio River.
Nope.
The Missouri.
Okay.
Look at it.
Who was president during the Great Depression and World War Two.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Very good.
Who was president during World War One?
Woodrow Wilson.
Oh, very good.
Who is the current Chief Justice of the United States?
John Roberts.
Okay.
What year was the Constitution written?
Your mom.
Parker?
No.
Okay, go on, Parker.
1782?
1787, very close.
By the way, all of this is on the website upnorthnewswi.com.
We've turned it into a story where you could take some of these questions.
The House of Representatives has how many members?
435.
Okay.
How many amendments does the Constitution have currently?
27.
Oh, Greg Bach, you are a citizen.
Name one writer of the Federalist Papers.
John
Jay.
Okay.
Extra credit for any of the other two.
Alexander Hamilton, John Jay.
No,
he
wouldn't.
Yeah.
There you go.
James Madison there.
Luke for the assist.
Yes.
He said, you know, I don't think
he got Missouri River.
I don't think he got that.
I
don't
believe you.
That's fake news.
I
always
get the Constitution.
I always either want to say 1782 or 1787.
I never feel confident of say one of the two.
So,
well, there you go.
And then there's one other question that was on there that we didn't include because it was more of an essay question, but it says, what is the rule of law?
Which is only a quarter soon of our democracy.
And the one question I think some folks in Washington might flunk.
Nowadays, Greg Bach, American citizen is back in one hour for Matt and Aaron air and then we'll talk to you again here tomorrow.
Sam joins us Parker as well in our next hour where we will have Chad Holmes, Sean O'Malley, Joseph, Becky, Brittany Merleau and the national news cycle
never stops, but it can be hard to find news about your local community.
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