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.
Joined as well by Parker Olson in Madison Studio A2 and Up North News reporter, Selena Heller, who joins us from Eau Claire.
Welcome back.
It's nice to have you here up north on this Monday morning, June 30th already.
Still to come, Selina is going to tell us more about the Chippewa Valley Air Show and talking with the Blue Angels.
And then at 7.30 we will be talking to one of my colleagues from Courier Newsroom in North Carolina about the Trump big bloated boondoggle of a budget bill and how North Carolina's Republican Senator
voted no on a part of it over the weekend and then promptly announced he was not running for reelection, a real profile and courage.
And then in our next hour we'll talk to Jeff Mandel from Law Forward on the lawsuit against Elon Musk to try to prevent more billionaire bribery during Wisconsin's Supreme Court elections.
Brittany is off today and so as I look just to see if I can share
anything remotely weather related with you, because we did get a lot of rain for those few days there.
Now we've got a dry period coming up.
It's still gonna be warm throughout the course of the week.
And so keep it tuned to your local Civic Media radio station throughout the course of the day for updates on the forecasts.
Let's see, Rob from Tigerton should be here somewhere.
There he is, good morning.
It's cloudy, light fog 66 degrees.
Tigerton got only twelve one hundredths of an inch of rain but 20 miles down the road in Clintonville they had 2.6 inches which
Yeah, makes sense.
He says there was major flooding in the Clintonville area, including flooding along Highway 45.
Lots of water there along the lake.
He took some pictures of the flooding after the rains ended in Clintonville.
And he said just five miles from his house, Northern Wapaka County had 60 mile an hour winds.
And I know at one point there was like an 82 mile an hour wind gust near Milwaukee yesterday as this front went through.
So hopefully folks didn't get too much damage.
But as I know,
last hour, even here in the Chippewa Valley, the Chippewa River is running really high, really fast.
Several rescues were needed yesterday from Chuckleheads who thought, oh, let's go tube down this thing, something Selena Heller would never do, but would join us now from Eau Claire.
You were, you were at the airport instead.
for the Chippewa Valley
Air Show,
which
is
always fun.
I always can hear it from way up here in Chippewa Falls.
I mean, it gets really good and loud.
But again, a healthy crowd on hand.
And how many of these have you worked at?
Everybody was asking me that over the weekend.
So I had to kind of figure it out.
I think what started it all is I first went up in Fat Albert, the C-130 of the Blue Angels in 2010.
And then after that,
they asked me to be part of the committee and so that puts this whole thing together and so ever since that
I've been part of this
yeah
so
however many
years shows
we've had since then but um I threw up in uh Fat Albert so I didn't know and
yet you came back for more
And the neat thing about it is every every air show I kind of had had have had the opportunity to do something fun like One year I I was in it was before the show and they're like There's a jelly belly team that he does tricks in the sky with his airplane He's just retired a couple last year year or two ago I don't know and then there's a truck that he lands on that speeds down the runway and they're like
you, can you help us?
And so, and I've known these guys for years.
And then I thought, I don't think I'm qualified for anything.
But I got in the truck and they're like, you're going to help land him on the truck.
And it was like, I, yeah, I really don't think that.
So my job was to tell him that abort, we were too far at the end of the runway.
And we had to do that.
So his safety depended on you doing something for the first time that you'd never done before.
What
could possibly go wrong?
That was a
great idea.
But that one worked.
So what future air show did he crash and die?
Because it had to have happened then by now, right?
Oh my
gosh.
Maybe not.
Well, he retired safely.
He's on the ground.
Okay.
All right.
Well, that's good.
And part of the show is that the funny part is like, oh, he doesn't, he tries and he doesn't land on the truck.
And that's, oh, no, that's part of the show.
But also I did have to say abort, abort because we got to the end of the runway and he wasn't on it.
And I thought, oh my heavens, this is I am
Absolutely.
This is not something that I should be doing.
Alicia writes on YouTube.
Selena, I am so jealous.
You said the first time I saw the Blue Angels in person was 2002 when I was in Pensacola for a school and they would practice daily.
And that's the thing.
These, these, you know, we're talking just now about the Blue Angels.
Definitely a precision team to put it mildly.
And so you got a chance to talk with them and let's, let's have some of the audio tell us about some of the
folks that you talked to.
So for all right,
well,
for the first
part,
Parker, I thought you were gonna say something there.
No, okay, okay.
My
apologies.
I need something.
So go ahead, Selena.
So last week, before the days of the air show, when they were first getting into town, I got to talk with several of the just the different teams that came into town for the show.
So the first one is commander office, commanding officer Adam Brian.
And he is one of the pilots of the Blue Angels.
And so which we know represents the US Navy and the Marine Corps.
And of course, showcase their precision and
the power of aviation.
So they are a team of over more than 100 members.
And so they come in and, you know, set up.
It's very regimented.
They have the whole thing.
And we have to follow all of these rules.
It's very specific.
But he talks about, you know, you know, you see him up in the air and how does that translate to what we see down on the ground where they're flying 18 inches apart, 400 miles an hour, 400 miles an hour.
So this is Adam Bryan talking about some of that precision.
So for our signature diamond formation that you'll see this weekend at the air show, we are upwards of 12 to 18 inches apart at any given time when we're flying.
It's extraordinarily close for our flight demonstration team, but it takes a tremendous amount of trust and work between us flying.
Then we get into the Delta formation or all six aircraft.
We're going to be a little bit farther away than that, but still fairly close to one another.
what's the chatter like on the headset?
I speak for about 45 minutes straight.
The pilots listen to me and they listen to the cadence that I provide them with my voice, my voice inflection, the volume that I like to use.
So I speak a lot and then everybody else has little parts where they need to speak.
Everything that we do is based on exacting procedures and we know when any given person to include myself is having an off day, we can actually hear it in their voice when they're talking.
Yeah, you don't want the off day.
Can you imagine
the update?
No, because I saw them flying in the diamond formation at one point as we were, you know, driving around over the weekend there.
And yeah, they're moving at hundreds of miles an hour, 12 inches apart, just so precise, which again, tells you that this has to be a very precision aircraft that they are operating, you know, where there's no wiggle room.
Who do we hear from next?
Petty Officer Taylor Miller, there's a lot of people that we got to have in our air show here in Eau Claire that are from Wisconsin.
So this was their hometown show.
They called it because their friends and family could come and we have a space for them to come and watch.
So Taylor Miller is part of the Blue Angel team on the ground.
He does video, watches the weather, things like that.
And he is from Appleton.
So this is actually really great for me.
So 27 years ago, my parents brought me to my first Blue Angel air show, and that was right here in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
So coming back here, 27 years later is absolutely surreal.
I still have pictures from that day.
So I'm actually flying tomorrow in the four jet.
I'm doing my backseat ride so that will be exhilarating.
That's a good way to put it.
Exhilarating.
Exhilarating?
All right.
What else we got?
So we have had all sorts of teams come into town and provide entertainment for the crowd.
So another one is the US Air Force F-16 Viper demonstration team based at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina.
And the head of that team is the female.
So I wanted to talk with her and she has a nine person team and they're all
men but I asked her what it was like to be a role model and this is Master Sergeant Deandra Baker.
It's something I have definitely taken for granted being a female until we go to the shows and the little girls want to take pictures with you or we're at another show and you hear girl power and all the females come up to you just want to take pictures.
So you definitely forget that you're a role model until that moment and it makes me proud you know to
be able to influence more females to come into a very male dominated industry.
That's awesome.
Again, the whole role model thing is so nice.
But then again, sorry.
Oh,
thanks.
They all told me, you know, one of their favorite parts is just interacting and talking to the kids and getting to see and talk to the kids.
And so that was
one of the things.
All right.
One more visit.
Who are we talking
to?
So this is Major Taylor Heaster.
He's the commander and pilot of that F16 demo team.
So they secretly did a paint job on one of their jets because it's the anniversary.
And so they painted it red, white, and blue.
And it's very noticeable.
It's pretty unique.
And he talks about that, Taylor Heaster.
What service means to me, I mean obviously we have a unique role of serving in a very elite team, representing the several hundred thousand American military members that are stationed around the world.
So service is near and dear to our heart.
We are at the core of this just ordinary active duty American airmen that have the unique opportunity to serve here and provide a combat capabilities that much of the
world.
Yeah so the airplane that you see behind me is the 1974 YF-16 paint scheme.
Last year was the 50th anniversary of the F-16 and this year turns 51 and we're our second of our second year of a two-year celebration of the 50th anniversary of the airplane.
I have.
I had a chance to fly at Oshkosh last year, and that was obviously a dream come true as a little kid that wanted to grow up and do airshows.
So to be back in Wisconsin, the hospitality is unmatched.
It seems in the Midwest entirely.
We always have wonderful luck out here.
And I think the military and patriotism, obviously, the roots run very deep here in the Midwest, and we're grateful to be here.
It always strikes me as an audience that is very grateful for their service.
They know they're not just there for entertainment.
These are men and women serving our country.
Yes, and that's a first and foremost thought but also, you know, that recruitment aspect of it when people see all of this.
Happening and and like like you heard this is this is their dream This is their dream come true to get to be able to fly all of these things and be part of these things and they're grateful to be in Eau Claire like Taylor said and so my job was hospitality that was my area to Kind of have them all come and give them a place to talk and hang out and eat and just just kind of hang out every night And so it was just fun to do all
sounds like a real hardship Selena.
I
don't know how.
Not a
bad gig.
Yeah, other than you know, complete and total lack of sleep.
But you know, you'll catch up a couple
hours for four days.
All right.
Well,
thank you for sharing all that.
It was it sounds so exhilarating and nice of you to get up early and recap it all for us.
And you know, we'll we'll I think you'll be a part of it the next time they're in town too.
I think so.
I think so.
And they did a nice flyby of Lambeau Field the Blue Angels did afterwards.
Yeah.
Saw that all over social media and was awesome.
Folks got to see them as well.
All right, Selena.
Thank you so much.
Have a great day.
Thanks
you do and or a good night.
You know get some sleep A local update is coming up next for some of you and when we're all back together in 15 minutes Michael McElroy from our North Carolina courier newsroom outlet Talks about a Republican senator there voting no on Trump's big bloated boondoggle and then announcing he won't run for reelection
Putting an open seat into play for Democrats to possibly take back the Senate.
That is coming up 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 Krightlo.
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.
30 minutes from right now, we'll have Jimmy Koska here to talk a little bit of sports over the weekend and we'll talk a bit about the Brewer's Rockies game in just a minute here.
And Jane McNair will join us at 8.50 to tell us what's coming up on her program starting at 9 o'clock.
A reminder that Up North News now has newsletters for every day of the week.
You can sign up at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
In today's edition of the newsletter, Christina Laurie talks about travel detective Peter Greenberg.
who is a proud badger.
He's been travel editor for CBS News but graduated from UW Madison and talks all about how UW Madison turned him into a travel guru.
Also a continuing series from Food Network, 25 iconic eats and drinks from America's Dairyland.
On the menu today, Norwegian meatballs.
which you see more here in Wisconsin than in many other states.
And so she talks more about that again, sign up for the newsletter up north news wi.com.
So about sports, Orlando Arcia hits hits this tiny home run for the Rockies.
I mean, they're down to their last out brewers are leading it's the bottom of the ninth inning.
And he hits only his second home run of the season.
Unfortunately, he's not a brewer anymore.
So that took it to extra innings, where eventually the Iraqis went on to win in 11 innings.
Final score was four to three.
The brewers took two out of three in that series.
They remain two games back of the Chicago Cubs.
Bryce Terang now has a 13 game hitting streak going on.
The brewers are off today.
on their way to New York and then Miami after that.
The Brewers will play the Mets Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights.
Each evening coverage will begin at 5.35 on several civic media stations.
Head over to civicmedia.us to learn more.
Dave Parker, who most folks associate with the Pittsburgh Pirates because of his 11 seasons there, but he also played a season for the Milwaukee Brewers in 1990.
Dave Parker passed away over the weekend at the age
of 74.
It's going to be bittersweet in Cooperstown when Dave Parker is inducted July 27th into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
So he knew that he had been elected.
He was going to be inducted and now will be finally recalled after his weekend passing.
Bobby Portis is going to stay with the Milwaukee Bucks.
He declined his player option and instead reached an agreement on a new three-year $44 million contract to be one of the most popular sixth men in the NBA today.
Little tip of the cap to Jim Schmidt, the outgoing chancellor at UW Eau Claire.
This is, I believe today is his last official day at work.
He has been on the job for exactly 12 years.
He began as chancellor at UW Eau Claire on July 1st, 2012 and has taken the university, you know, my alma mater to
new heights in so many areas from a program standpoint, sports, facilities, science, so much has changed on that campus since Jim Schmidt began his tenure here.
He's moving on to James Madison University in Virginia, if memory serves correctly, where I'm sure he's going to do extremely well there, too.
But he made a real difference, not just on the four corners of that campus in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, but throughout the Chippewa Valley, throughout the local economy, the impact that the university has.
And so Jim, again, thanks for all that you've done.
We will miss you and wish you all the best moving forward.
Let's do a quick budget update here as well the joint finance committee of the Wisconsin legislature was supposed to meet Friday morning to work out some of the final details on a state budget Which is supposed to begin tomorrow on July 1st, but that won't happen because Republicans are in disarray in the state capital I know just like they are in the US capital and in both cases you've got people who are demanding even more
damaging spending cuts and others who recognize that maybe most folks want their tax dollars used for value that will come to them and not to somebody in a higher tax bracket.
Well anyway the joint finance committee was supposed to meet at 10 a.m.
didn't meet until 10 p.m.
and even then they
didn't finish their work, some of the biggest issues remain unresolved, including department budgets that control things like the UW system, Medicaid, childcare support, some very big ticket items.
The big question is whether Republicans in the Senate, the 18 of them, they have an 18-15 majority, well, they can only afford to lose one vote.
So will they get something that will satisfy all but one of their members?
If not, if two or more say they just can't agree, will the Republican leadership then turn to Democrats in the state Senate and say, let's make a deal and let's get this done?
Or do Republicans just say, well, we can't agree amongst ourselves and we don't feel like compromising with Democrats.
And so we're just gonna go home and not pass a budget bill at all.
any current budget will just stay in place.
Which means nobody will see any funding hikes or funding cuts or changes in services or new ideas that will be put into play and basically you'll have a lazy legislature taking the blame for not passing a budget.
That's a risk that some of them may be willing to take.
We'll talk to one of those Democratic state senators about whether there's an opportunity for Democrats to be brought into the negotiating table and has it happened already.
State Senator Kelder Royce will be part of the Todd Alba Show at 2.30 this afternoon.
I'll be filling in for Todd during that two o'clock hour, along with Trig V. Olsen from the Lincoln Project.
So again, join us along with Senator Kelder Royce at 2.30 for the latest update on what is happening with the state budget.
And one more note, Parker, it's a big 50th anniversary this year.
Whoops, there you go.
It's a big 50th anniversary this year for a Wisconsin landmark product.
Light beer from Miller.
Taste great, less filling.
I would recommend a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story on it today that you can find all about how it basically saved brewing in Milwaukee.
I mean, Miller was a distant third to Schlitz and Papst back in the day.
And then Miller comes up with Miller Lite and that great marketing campaign.
And the rest as they say is history.
So there's a lot to be said there.
So happy anniversary, Miller light.
Very.
All right, coming up next, we'll talk to my courier newsroom colleague from North Carolina, Michael McElroy.
And thank you so much for spending part of your Monday mornings with us powered by Up North News.
We'll have more live from Chippewa Falls after the Midwest Farm Report here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Kratlow.
Tomorrow on the program, we'll have Dairy Farmer Hans Brighton Moser joining us as usual from up in Lincoln County.
We'll have Chad Holmes joining us from Wausau, Dan Schaefer from the recombobulation area, Dan Hagen from WJFW News Watch 12 in Rhinelander.
On Wednesday, we'll have State Representative Angela Stroud from the Superior Area talking about a bill that purported to address the removal of lead water lines in the Superior Area.
but she voted against this Republican bill for understandable reasons that she will tell us about that's coming up on Wednesday.
If you can't catch the show live, you can pod to this program.
You can listen to us anytime on demand.
Subscribe to our show as a podcast on Spotify, on Apple, and you can catch backup episodes over at CivicMedia.us.
And a reminder that we now have this new Sunday morning newsletter Sunday mornings with pack right low all about Wisconsin politics head over to our website up north news wi.com and Be a subscriber in yesterday's edition that came out We also have our question of the week and it's about who will the Republicans run for governor next year now Obviously, we still don't know what's gonna happen with Governor Tony Evers if he's gonna run for a third term or not But our question to you is now that both Tim Michaels
And Eric Hovde have said they might be interested in running for governor next year.
Who do you think the Republican nominee is going to be?
Will it be Eric Hovde?
Will it be Tim Michaels?
Will it be Josh Schumann, the Washington County executive?
Josh Schumann, I should say.
Will it be another Republican politician like Congressman Tom Tiffany?
Or will it be just some other rich guy that wants to come in and try to waltz right into the governor's office through the Republican primary?
What's your best guess right now?
You get that question of the week at our newsletter at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
Well, now they're going to be playing this same guessing game in North Carolina after the surprise news that their Republican state senator is not running next year.
That announcement came only a day after Senator Tom Tillis stood up to Donald Trump and voted no on a procedural vote dealing with Trump's big bloated boondoggle of a budget bill.
But he was a rebel for all of one day before announcing he was not going to be running for reelection.
Michael McElroy is the political correspondent for the Cardinal and Pine, the Courier Newsroom outlet for North Carolina.
And Michael joins us now.
McElroy, how are you?
I'm great, Pat.
How are
you?
Good.
It's so nice to have you here.
belated happy birthday.
Did not realize that yesterday was your birthday.
Quite a quite a bit of news to come down.
So we had heard, you know, just from a very vague 30,000 foot overview that the North Carolina Senate race, you know, Tom Tillis was going to be running for reelection.
But we kept hearing it was going to be a tough fight because we know North Carolina is a swing state like Wisconsin.
But
just because we heard it was going to be a tough fight, was it still a surprise that Tom Till said he was not going to run for reelection?
Oh, absolutely.
I think it was a big surprise.
And one of the reasons is that
Tom Tillis, if you're looking at it from that big point, that big picture point of view of who do you want in a tough fight in a increasingly purple state for Republicans, it's gonna, it would have to be something like Tom Tillis.
Because when all this scuttle was about Mark Robinson potentially challenging Tillis in a primary, while it's possible that Mark Robinson, Mark Robinson was the far, far, far, far right candidate, while it's certainly possible he could win a primary,
he would have no hope of winning a statewide Senate race in North Carolina.
And so if Republicans are going to maintain that seat, it's going to have to be someone like Tom Tillis, someone who has a bipartisan approach.
But of course, a bipartisan approach is not at all what Republicans want.
And it's that bipartisan approach is what got Tom Tillis essentially fired.
I mean, he said he wasn't going to run for reelection, but that's because
Donald Trump didn't like the way that Tillis voted, and so he said that he would challenge him.
So Tillis was almost essentially pushed out, not just resigned.
Right.
He
didn't resign, didn't resign, but said that he wouldn't go for reelection.
Right.
And look, when you when people say, well, why would why would Tillis do that?
Why would he go against Trump on a vote on that budget bill?
The thing that we remind people of here consistently is that North Carolina is one of the more recent states where Republicans agreed to expand Medicaid, something that still hasn't been done here in Wisconsin.
And, you know, North Carolina is still a swing state.
I know not everybody necessarily
certainly sees it that way.
But Tom Tillis, no doubt, saw that there might have been an avenue for him, you know, not going to the far right.
And now he hasn't.
Now he's decided to get out of it.
So if you take him out of the equation, does that Senate race, again, without any candidate on either side, what's North Carolina like?
Is this indeed a toss up state, a toss up race, if you don't put any names on the ballot yet?
Yes, it is 100% a toss up.
And I mean, from being from North Carolina, I happen to believe that North Carolina is the most exciting state politically because of how close it is on some of these things.
But I will say this, that Republicans do very well in North Carolina when they can gerrymander.
the districts.
So they have a strong hold on the legislature in part, in fact, in most part because of gerrymandering.
So statewide elections for Hogan's don't do is great, with the very glaring exception of Donald Trump himself, who has won handedly both times in North Carolina.
But governor, attorney general, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, just so many statewide elections, Democrats run the high profile.
So the Senate race is going to be a really hard election for a Republican to win if they are only catering to the far-right elements of the party.
So let's take a look at who some of those candidates might be.
And as I'm looking at the ones for the Republicans, you're right.
There's a lot of far-right that's listed there potentially.
But let's start on the Democratic side.
who may be most likely to run, it sounds like somebody with, I mean, the total statewide name ID, a former governor.
Yeah, well, Roy Cooper is the big one.
Now, he has not said, he's been very cagey about what he is going to do.
But people have been debating this for almost two years, really, since, because he was term limited.
He wasn't, he couldn't run again.
But he was a very popular Democratic governor in a public state.
He was even popular among
Republicans.
So he had a much higher approval rating than any Republican liked to admit ever.
So he was the perfect Senate candidate thinking just on paper.
Okay, but he hasn't declared.
Right now, Wiley Nicholl, a former Democratic congressman, who was pushed out of his district through gerrymandering.
Before gerrymandering, he won in a pretty almost slightly leaning Republican district.
So he's got the scope.
He doesn't really have the name recognition, but he's got the chomps to do it.
But right now, it's just him.
He's declared.
But if Roy Cooper declares,
And if he wins the primary, I would say the Republicans have no hope to get that Senate seat if they run a far right candidate.
Well, and that's what you might have in terms of potential Republican candidates.
According to Axios, they are listing former Republican National Committee Chair, Michael Watley, former RNC vice chair, Laura Trump,
is listed in there.
Let's see, there's also representatives Pat Harrigan, Tim Moore, and Brad Knot.
But that apparently Laura Trump has what's called the right of first refusal.
She'd have a hard time saying no if asked by her father-in-law, a Trump advisor said
to Axios, although they'd be surprised if she wanted to leave the good gig that she has at Fox.
How wonderful that you're caught up in the, you know, your state politics is dependent upon whether somebody's ready to leave Fox News or not, said the guy from Sean Duffy's Wisconsin.
Yeah, none of those, I mean, none of those names are going to be Roy Cooper.
No.
And now the thing is, if Roy Cooper doesn't run, then it becomes super interesting.
But I will say Tim Moore, Tim Moore is a big deal.
He too, like, tell us he was a speaker of the House and he's a big name in North Carolina politics.
But he only won his congressional race because he gerrymandered himself a district and it was a little bit closer than people thought it would be.
Same with Brad Knot.
Brad Knot is
in Washington because of a gerrymandered seat.
So none of those folks have any track record that suggests they can win a statewide race, especially against a candidate that does appeal to both sides.
How fascinating that.
so much of the Republican power or the lack of Democratic power in certain races is a result either of gerrymandering or term limits.
And if those things, you know, weren't in play, you'd have a completely different state of North Carolina politics.
We're talking to Michael McElroy, political correspondent for the Cardinal and Pine, part of Courier Newsroom.
You can check out what Michael's doing over at CardinalPine.com.
For North Carolina to be the swing state that it is,
it is I believe in part because there is such a distinct rural urban divide in that state as well as in our state where and it's to put it very in a very shallow way it's
Madison and Milwaukee against the rest of the state.
Now, it's clearly it's much more complex than that.
But if you also start from that 30,000 foot view of North Carolina, is there a similar dynamic there with cities versus rural areas?
I don't know.
I think that the reason that I have a hard time answering that question is because the line between city and rural
is a very short drive and and and you're still in the same county.
I mean like you know Raleigh is in Wake County and Raleigh is the beating heart of Wake County but it's just you know a stone's throw until you're in a very rural area of Wake County and so
And so the and the and the overlap of state and city governments and everything.
So I would say that I don't know that that divide is as big as it as we think and a lot like because a lot of the a lot of the the engine of the state government general assembly they come from rural areas.
And so when they pass when they pass a bill that will have a super effect again on rural communities.
they hear about it.
It doesn't stop them from passing legislation that will hurt rural communities.
It hasn't stopped them from standing up to the Medicaid bill, this bill, Medicaid cuts that will have a devastating effect on rural communities.
But I'm not sure that that divide is as big politically.
Well, so we've got that big story then that came up of your U.S.
Senator deciding not to run for reelection after standing up to Trump.
Before that came about, what were some of the other stories that you were following there?
I would imagine it starts with impact from, you know, the Republican tax bill.
Yeah, I mean, that's the hugest story, because there is no other political story right now that is going to have as big an impact, even if the delays that are put into the bill to postpone some of these things ultimately pass.
Honestly, even before Tillis resigned, we were talking about Tom Tillis because I did a video about Tom Tillis privately warning these Republicans.
The same thing he said on the floor the other day about why he was voting against it.
He was trying to tell folks, passing out handouts with the numbers of North Carolina.
He said that this bill would be, quote, devastating to my state, end quote.
So Tillis was a big topical conversation.
And I still think it was surprising that he resigned, but he had been
saying that, that he said he wouldn't run for reelection, but that he still, but that the issues that he was trying to.
highlight quietly, we have to say, not publicly quietly, we're the big story.
Well, I guess theoretically, this now gives him, you know, the ability to continue using that megaphone to warn people, but it would have been a little bit more courageous had he done so with his name on the ballot.
Michael McElroy, political correspondent for the Courier Newsroom outlet in North Carolina, the Cardinal and Pine.
Michael, thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Have a great day.
you too.
Thank you so much.
All right, good to talk to you.
And when we come back, well, some of you are going to have a local update next and others will hear from Jimmy Koska talking about sports over the weekend, where the brewers dropped one to the Rockies and extra innings yesterday.
And in our eight o'clock hour, when we're all back together, we'll talk to Jeff Mandel from Law Forward.
That's all live from Chippewa Falls here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pac Wright.
Well,
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.
Over on YouTube, let's see Alicia is guessing that Rebecca Cleafish will be a candidate for governor.
You can certainly cast your own thoughts on who will be the Republican
nominee for governor in 2026.
Whatever Governor Tony Evers decides, it's our question of the week.
In our Sunday morning newsletter, sign up for it over at up North News W I dot com.
Let's bring in Jimmy Kuska now to talk about some of the sports over the weekend and more.
Jimmy, how are you?
I'm doing great.
It's always great to talk to somebody over there on the shores of Lake Wasota.
I love talking back home.
It was one of the quieter weekends on our part of the lake and the river where the Chippewa River kind of opens up and becomes Lake Wasota because the river is so high.
Folks couldn't really take their boats out.
The water was moving really fast.
So I'm hoping it all
settles down by this next weekend, 4th of July weekend.
Yeah, he also had Hoofbeat going on, which I'm sure drew a certain crowd with it.
So,
you know, it's funny, you say Hoofbeat and, you know, old guy that I am, I won't stop saying Country Fest.
I gotta go
branding in my hometown, so I'll go along with it, I guess.
Oh, no, it's fine.
And people had a great time.
Saw a lot of good social media picks.
I have not been out there for a long time.
I am definitely do.
And unfortunately, some of those people
They got just dumped on when those thunderstorm lines came through on Saturday night.
But again, people said people were having fun.
So you pay that money for tickets.
You're going to make the most of it, no matter what.
For sure.
It's always a good time in my hometown no matter what the weather is.
That's right.
So how happy are Bucks fans that Bobby Portis assigned this new three-year deal?
You know, of all the moves that the Bucks were going to make this offseason, this is probably the only one that really just checked the obvious box because
There's not a lot they can do.
I mean, there's the way that things are for the Bucks right now.
They've traded basically all of their future draft picks that they can trade given the rules.
They don't have a whole lot of roster flexibility in terms of contracts.
So free agency is going to be exciting for teams that have the space and the money to make the moves.
The Bucks just don't have the assets to do a whole lot.
So for the Bucks, this was important because you're getting
a contributor, essentially, a pretty good deal given his production.
So for the Bucks, this is good news.
It's not exciting news, but it is good news, given that they don't have a whole lot of flexibility to do
anything.
It strikes me this way.
And I don't follow the team nearly to the degree that others do.
But there was all this talk after the Bucks had another first round elimination from the playoffs.
But that was it.
They'd shot their shot.
and they did not have the personnel to, you know, make a deeper run into the playoffs next year unless they traded Giannis or Bobby or whatever the case may be.
But in signing Bobby Portis and in, you know, not trading Giannis, you know, as part of the NBA draft last week, I feel like it's their way of saying, you know what, no, we think we do have one more year where we can go deep into the playoffs and, you know, lacking any draft picks.
This is how they're going to try to make the most of it, I guess.
Hey, in the NBA, if you've got that transcendent superstar, you've got to shot at anything, really.
And that's a theory I'm willing to subscribe to, because for as long as the bucks have Yanis, they'll be relevant, and they'll be in some form of contention.
Obviously, the playoff exits have been disappointing.
They've had an amazing stroke of bad luck with injuries, and they'll have that again this year with Amy and Lillian out for a long time with the Achilles injury.
But as long as you have Yanis, all things are possible, right?
So for the bucks, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to trade them for pennies on the dollar, and then just hope that a draft pick pans out.
They've already got them.
main piece in place for contention.
And that is a superstar.
So you know what I would liken it to and it's it's not quite an apples to apples comparison.
But since right now, folks in on the Western side of Wisconsin are hearing us.
It's a Minnesota twins thing where the roster from the 1987 World Series champions and the 1991 World Series champions were different, except that in the middle, in both cases, you had Kirby Puckett.
And Ken Herbeck.
And in between, the twins dropped to last place back in 1990 before coming back in 1991.
So like you just said, if you've got a solid core, you can build around it.
Yeah.
And there's not going to be another big move that's going to excite people.
There's not a signing they're going to make.
There's probably not a trade that's going to happen.
It's not going to be on the level of swapping out and getting Damian Lillard.
I mean, not to say never, but it seems extremely unlikely given what they have to offer that that's going to happen.
So all things considered, this was the best thing that could really happen this offseason that they get some of it a deal on Avi Portas to come back.
And now they have to decide on Gary Trent and then the other relatively smaller moves will follow.
Brewers are off today.
They're heading to New York.
They play the Mets.
You can hear the games Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, all starting at 535 with pregame coverage across the Civic Media radio network.
We are now actually past the halfway point of the season for the Brewers.
And 10 games over 500 is, you know, that's nothing to sneeze at.
No, and this is a huge series because the Mets and the Brewers are only separated by a game of the wildcard standing.
So this is a massively important series for Milwaukee, which currently has the seventh best run differential in all of baseball.
They've scored the seventh most runs.
They've got a budding young star in the Mizz, which that game Wednesday, by the way, the hype was off the charts for it.
And I felt like personally it lived up to it.
It was so fun to see kind of a superstar in the making.
The place was sold out.
was sold out, packed to the gills.
When they sell it a preferred parking, it's a big game.
It's exciting right now for the Brewers.
They're right in the thick of contention.
There's no question that they've gone from maybe a month ago when we were talking, maybe we were thinking, well, maybe they sell some pitching and they bring in some pros.
But now you're thinking, OK, now they're firmly in contention.
Because if the season ended today, they're in the playoffs as a wildcard team.
But you look at the NL, and there are like 10 teams all just kind of packed in there in contention right now.
finish to the year for sure.
No doubt.
Okay, then finally, in high school, no shot clock in high school basketball for at least another year.
I didn't know there wasn't one.
Yeah, so high school basketball won't have a shot clock.
The advisory council didn't even advance it to the board of control.
Last year, the board of control voted it down right away after it passed the various committees and councils.
This year didn't even make it to that stage.
So I know there are some frustrated coaches out there.
Wisconsin, once again, in high school sports will be one of the last few to adopt the major rule change.
And in this case, it happens to be shot clocks and basketball.
Right now, 31 states in DC have a shot clock.
Wisconsin does not.
Jamie Koska, thank you so much.
As always, have a great start to the week.
We'll talk to you Wednesday.
Talk to you later.
All right, coming up in our eight o'clock hour, Jeff Mandel from Law Forward will be here to talk about Summing Elon Musk.
Hey, remember, you can follow my team at Up North News all day long through our newsletters, social media, and our website, upnorthnewswi.com.
And of course, right here, Mornings on the Civic Media Radio Network will be joined by John and Gordy right after the eight o'clock news and Jane McNair is one hour away.
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.
