Transcript
Taking the Public Out of Public Broadcasting (Hour 2)
Mornings with Pat Kreitlow · Fri Jul 18, 2025
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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Basota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
Hey, good morning.
It is 706.
Nice to have you here up north on this Friday morning, July 18th.
Parker Olson is our producer down in Madison Studio A2.
And coming up will be our Friday weekend review panel with former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel.
We'll also talk to a journalist Mark Jacob and Jennifer Scholesy about the things they've been writing about.
I will beg them to find us something to talk about besides the Epstein files.
Never want to talk about them this much.
Just wasn't expecting Donald Trump to throw his supporters under the bus and do so.
But there are definitely other things that have happened.
beyond the upstream files.
And we'll talk about that.
We will get back into something we touched on last hour, which is CBS deciding to cancel the Stephen Colbert late show, cancel the franchise entirely as part of a corporate cave-in.
So I know our panel will have some thoughts to say about that.
In our eight o'clock hour, we'll talk to Dr. Kristen Lyrely.
We will have Mike Clemens with sports and so much more coming up.
Now, as we
Let you know yesterday, Brittany Merleau is off today.
She is on her way to the EAA in Oshkosh.
She is a huge EAA fan and is going to be camping out there throughout the course of the week.
So I can tell you that from the folks at the National Weather Service tell us that we are expecting a partly sunny day across Wisconsin today, high temperatures in the 70s.
But then there will be periodic showers and storms at any point from tonight into Monday.
Depending on where you are there's a chance that that will come through and that some of the rain could be heavy So you want to pay attention to your local forecast here on these civic media radio stations So highs will be in the mid 70s even the mid 80s in some spots low temperatures will range in the mid 50s to the mid 60s Now how would you like to win some Brewer's tickets?
because it is free ticket Friday and we're we're here again on a summertime Friday doing our free ticket Friday
Four tickets to see a specific game and you have to send us a specific keyword using the Civic Media app.
You go to the app, you go to one of the stations, it gives you all these options like a voice note or text and text us from one of those and text us the keyword for this morning.
And you've got till nine o'clock till the end of the show and then there will be other opportunities to win on shows throughout the rest of this free ticket Friday here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
All right, Pat, give them the word already.
It's throw.
THROW.
And again, you have to spell it correctly.
No other punctuation or anything else.
Just throw.
Text it and you'll be entered into this statewide drawing to have four tickets won to see the Brewers Cubs game next Monday, July 28th.
So a week from this coming Monday.
Monday, July 28th, a Brewers Cubs game.
Free tickets at the club level.
Somebody's gonna win these it may as well be you if you can go to the game if you can take the electronic tickets Then text us throw THROW before nine o'clock and listen throughout the day for your chance to win so the Brewers are in fact getting back in action after the all-star break They're out on the west coast so we've got some late-night baseball coming up for the next couple of nights here Brewers and Dodgers the pregame tonight starts at 835
And then tomorrow night at 7.35 and then Sunday afternoon at 2.35.
So those are your radio times for the Brewers Dodgers series.
And then the Brewers head up the coast to Seattle.
They will be in Seattle next week, Monday and Tuesday nights and Wednesday afternoon.
Then next week, Thursday, they're off before beginning a home stand with the weekend series against the Florida Marlins starting a week from tonight.
or week from this afternoon, rather.
And then again, as mentioned, the Cubs coming to town starting that Monday, the 28th.
So a lot of action coming up for the Brewers now that the All-Star break is wrapping up.
Again, with Brittany Merlot not here, let's go into the other thing that I would normally do at about this time.
And that's get to the mailbag folks that have sent things in here.
This one from on the text line from Jim in Brookfield.
Pat, despite all of the bad news, you made me laugh out loud.
Yes, I can only hope Trump's presidential library is shaped like a big golden toilet.
We all need a bit of a sense of humor in these trying times.
Thank you, Jim.
I do my best.
Let's see.
I am absolutely certain that Robin Tigerton is wishing us a good morning somewhere.
Here it is on YouTube.
Good morning from Tigerton.
Sunny and 51 degrees.
Today I've got three yards to mow in the rural areas of Tigerton.
Yesterday was a really beautiful day, he writes.
The skies had a true blue and it felt fall comfortable outside.
He says, I had to get my eyes checked in Wittenberg.
I have reading glasses.
They put drops in my eye and I had to wear sunglasses outside.
And then I love the, sometimes we get things without context.
People react in the moment.
So I don't know that Alicia was reacting to what Rob wrote or something that she heard on the radio, but I'm going to put them together.
So when Rob says I had to put sunglasses on after they put drops in my eye and when I had it outside, the next comment is Alicia going, no, which might be for Rob or it might be for something they said.
I don't know.
Anyway, you can and Roger from Stevens Point.
writes to us about Trump's use of I kept using the word leverage in pressuring the media and in pressuring universities and Roger corrects me properly says I call that extortion he loves free money all very true and you can of course be part of all this by heading to Facebook or YouTube and
Putting some comments there.
What did I miss Parker?
Was it the was it the Bob Euker thing to introduce free ticket Friday?
Oh We do don't we because she is gonna be running for a seat in the state Senate here And shame on me for not putting the start time on that clip so that I would stop yapping in time to do that so What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cheat our Friday panel a little bit and we'll start that
at 720 so that we can hear state representative robin vining talking about running for state senate but i see mark jacob is standing by now and i see jim santella standing by right now so if they don't mind i'm gonna pop them up and and apologize for keeping my eye off the clock over there mark jacob good morning how are you
i'm good
all right sounds good jim yourself i'm
That is the most conditional I'm doing
I've ever,
ever seen.
So anyway, yeah, so folks will take a break at 720 as we always do and we'll play a little bit from State Representative Robin Vining.
But Jim, I said to you during the news, I said, please give me anything to talk about other than the Epstein files because look, it was a big story this week.
because of the way Trump did this about face and yadda yadda yadda.
We covered all that.
Jim, what else are you following this week that we can maybe hear on amicus a law review coming up this weekend on the civic media radio network?
We're going to be talking about some things going on beyond beyond Washington DC, some interesting litigation out there in the federal courts, but also Department of Justice.
Maybe we'll chat about that this morning as well.
Pat, lots of people, huge numbers of lawyers leaving.
These are the litigators, these are the tenured people, lots of firings going on, both in U.S.
Attorney's offices and there as well.
And yes, indeed, we've got more birthright citizenship, believe it or not.
That has not yet been resolved, of course, so lots of things to talk about on Saturday.
Again, I just don't understand how this birthright citizenship is a thing.
And in fact, let me ask you this.
Make the case.
Make the case that birthright citizenship, is it just that it's
Was something not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution and it's subject to interpretation?
So there's this small phrase, subject to the jurisdiction.
They're obvious in the second line of the 14th Amendment, and it has been interpreted routinely as not being what the president says it does.
He seizes on that and says, well, gee, if you were born of a mother who wasn't properly here, legally here, she was temporarily here, then we don't have jurisdiction over you, and therefore you're not a citizen.
That's absurd, and it has been rejected previously by the Supreme Court, by everybody else who's looked at it recently in the past.
And it is simply not consistent with any, any rational interpretation.
But again, high marks, which is something I very rarely do for this group to come up with, again, the latest crazy theory to get us all wound up about something that should not be a thing.
If you're born here, you're a citizen.
Let's all say that together, right?
And hopefully that will waft over to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and probably not get in anybody's ear.
But still, it's nice to say outlaw because it is what the truth is.
It's what the law is.
Well, and you notice sometimes the waffling on the part of the media, which takes us to Jennifer Scholesi, who's here as well.
Jennifer, good morning.
I apologize.
As I said, we're going to pop you up early because we've got a little tape to play coming up after the commercial break here.
So let's just give a little tease of your newsletter on Substack.
Look up News Jennifer and it says the latest edition is called the $16 million edit.
Paramount's capitulation to Trump.
We covered a little bit in the last hour, but again, it appears it appears clear that CBS Paramount is doing this not because there was anything wrong with their 60 minutes piece, but it's it's all corporate game playing, basically.
And it's a it's a real kick in the pants to, you know, journalism everywhere, Jennifer.
Oh, let me let me get you unmuted there.
There you go.
I think the bottom line is that Donald Trump is running that company.
I mean, look at what happened with Stephen Colbert.
He says he doesn't like the way something is edited.
They write in a $16 million check.
There's no basis in, there are no issues there, no real issues except we want to do whatever he tells us to
do.
Yeah.
And Mark Jacob as his new newsletter, stop the presses at stop the presses dot news or through courier newsroom and one of the latest issues is called five scenarios for staving off a dictatorship.
Well, Mark, where were you when we needed you?
I mean, can we can we can we do any of these things now?
But yeah, but but you know, here you have
the, you know, Trump's in control of, you know, the White House, the Congress, and the Supreme Court, you know?
And so what does that leave?
It leaves people power.
It leaves the people getting out of the streets and leaves them reaching out to their lawmakers.
And, you know, on many issues, you see Trump's numbers going down.
I mean, even on immigration, he's underwater.
So it's not that he's popular, it's that he has
managed to seize control by, you know, Cowardly Congress and, you know, to me, illegitimate Supreme Court.
So, but there's the people are still to be heard.
I mean, you can't, you know, we can fight back is what I'm saying.
Yeah.
And so there's there's that.
Can you tease us with any one of the five scenarios?
Well, the first scenario is that the midterms actually happen and that the Democrats win them and start clawing things back, you know, get the House at least and probably not the Senate, but maybe.
I mean, the other scenarios are kind of unlikely, which is that Trump's administration collapses of its own incompetence or that the Supreme Court grows a spine or that Congress grows a spine.
I mean, the only thing about Congress growing a spine is that these, the Republican lawmakers are essentially weak and cowardly people, you know, they've been to Trump.
So if the public opinion becomes so strong, they will bend to the public opinion.
Yeah.
So there's Mark Jacob.
You get his newsletter, stop the presses at stopthepresses.news and Jennifer Schulze's indistinct chatter is on substack.
And of course, former US Attorney Jim Santel has amicus a law review that you can hear on Saturday mornings live from nine to 11 across the Civic Media Radio Network.
And then it's played back on Sunday mornings as well.
Now coming up next for some of you will be a local update across the network.
And others will stick around here as we can
to continue to visit with our Week in Review panel.
And then, when we're all back together in about 15 minutes here, we will first play an interview from State Representative Robin Vining, who announced late yesterday that she's running for a seat in the State Senate.
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 Critello, 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.
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It is a free ticket Friday here on Civic Media, so you can win four tickets, club level seats to see the Brewer's Cubs game on Monday, July 28th, so a week from this coming Monday.
If you can go and if you can use electronic tickets on your phone, then you should enter this contest, a statewide contest where you text in a keyword using the Civic Media app.
and then we'll have a drawing statewide and somebody's gonna win these tickets and so before the end of this show, before 9 a.m., text us this morning's keyword, throw, T-H-R-O-W, throw, and you'll be entered for those Brewer's Tickets as part of Free Ticket Friday.
And something I alluded to last hour is a new segment that will be coming to our program and we're gonna preview it next week, Tuesday.
Courier Newsroom correspondent, Cam Stevenson, got to Courier Newsroom about the same time I did.
I was starting up Up North News, and he was starting the copper courier in Arizona.
But now, in a situation not that unlike the Beverly Hillbillies, he's moving from Arizona to Washington, D.C., maybe it's a reverse Beverly Hillbillies.
He's moving from the fancy neighborhoods of Arizona to the swamp.
in Washington DC and will be Courier Newsroom's Capitol Hill correspondent.
He has a new daily newsletter about things happening in DC called Below the Beltway and he will join us Tuesday mornings at 6.30 to tell us what's happening in the Capitol.
Now he's going to do it this next week, Tuesday.
And then he's going to take off because Congress will be in recess and he's going to actually make the move from Arizona to DC.
But we'll have a nice chance to catch up with Kam and you can subscribe to his newsletter as well.
Head to couriernewsroom.com to learn more.
Former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel is with us as well as journalist Mark Jacob and Jennifer Schulze talking about things that are in the news and in the courts this week.
And so we've talked a bit about
the Paramount CBS decision, canceling Stephen Colbert, not just settling the lawsuit, but now canceling the Stephen Colbert show, the late show, not naming a new host.
They're just scrapping the number one franchise in late night and saying, oh, it's a financial move.
Mark, who believes this?
you know nobody nobody should i mean the number one rated uh you know late night talk show and you know my suspicion is that it was a side deal you know in the uh paramount you know settlement uh with uh with trump because you know there was all this talk about well you know trump is demanding an apology from cbs and that would have been disastrous because i mean probably uh cbs would have lost its entire 60 minutes uh you know anchors if if it had done that
And so they were refusing to apologize, even though they wrote them a $16 million check.
And I'm just wondering whether there was kind of a handshake agreement side deal that, all right, we'll cancel Colbert for you.
And it's also pretty likely that Colbert would have been gone anyway when this Paramount deal with Skydance goes through, because Skydance is owned by the Ellison's and they're big, chummy people with Trump.
You know, this is this is corporate media giving you fewer choices in order to support an autocratic leader
Okay now at the at the risk of romanticizing the past Jennifer I I do believe that in a parallel universe the people running CBS would have looked at that skydance deal and said
is this really worth it?
And frankly, I'm asking, what is Skydance Studios, a movie studio, really that important that you would do this to your reputation?
And I'd like to think that once upon a time, people would have looked and said, well, no, we will just find some other way to go so that we're not capitulating to a president.
And again, all I can ask you to do is, you know, wander down with me.
But I feel like the the ethics out there in this world were a little larger once upon a time.
It has
Sherry
She didn't care what happened to CBS.
And Mark's right.
Some of the early reporting, I believe, from Oliver Darcy was that Colbert and Ann John Stewart, who are both pretty tough critics of Donald Trump,
were part of the discussion, and they were both expected to lose their shows when this deal went through.
I think maybe there's some surprise that Colbert, it happened yesterday and not a few months from now, but I don't think we should be surprised that that's happened.
And I think we should be looking ahead to massive changes at CBS News as well.
the new ownership does take over, if not before.
When the ink is finally dry on there.
Jim, is it terribly common that when lawsuits are settled that there's a lot that's tangible, this dollar amount or this apology, but that they're also like little side deals that say, look, you're also gonna do this.
It's not gonna be on paper anywhere, but you're gonna do this.
Is this unheard of or is this routine or what?
It's
I mean, typically, of course, in the criminal setting, everything has got to be nailed down within inches of its life.
Civil as well.
Usually what happens in court proceedings is that a judge will look at the parties and say, okay, we're not going to trial on this, which, again, that's the real point.
As Jennifer and Mark and you have said, this case should have gone to trial, and a judge should have said there's no there there.
That's the alternative history.
that also should have happened here, but we don't get that here.
A judge should be looking at this and saying, okay, I'm looking at all of you.
Tell me, is everything committed to paper in front of me right now?
And you can still in the civil arena, you don't have a lot of penalties if you don't do that, but the assumption is you've got it all in the public record.
It is transparent to use that word once again.
That's what the judicial system is supposed to be all about so that the public can also
get a sense of things, and if it isn't, it may not rise to the level of fraud on the court, fraud on the public, but it certainly is not the way that good litigators work, that courts work, and that people who are straightforward with the American public should be working.
Right.
Let's continue exploring that on the other side.
We're going to take a little pause here.
Let everybody take a little coffee.
And then we're going to hear from state representative Robin Vining, who is a candidate for state Senate in the Milwaukee suburbs.
It's going to be a big race to watch.
And then more with our Week in Review panel here on these mornings, powered by UpNorth News, live from Lake Wasota on the Civic Media Radio Network.
We are going to have more with our Week in Review panel.
Mark Jacob, Jennifer Schultz, Jim Santel coming up in about 10 minutes.
First, a little bit of housekeeping in our daily newsletter.
You can sign up for it at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
We run down this weekend's county fairs.
There's at least eight of them going on around the state and talk a bit about ways that you can spend your summer weekend here in Wisconsin over the next couple of days.
On our website right now is my latest article on the aftermath of the state budget.
The headline is it's what's not in the state budget that is generating both anger and 2026 candidates.
You'll recall that we had a little news yesterday when
Childcare provider Karine Hendrickson said she is exploring a run for legislature and is closing up her child care center.
By the way, you can read more about that and all of the the newsmakers we've had on the show this week by signing up for our Sunday morning newsletter.
Again, UpNorthNewsWI.com and subscribe there.
But again, there's already
A candidate in that race, State Representative Jenna Jacobson is running in the 17th Senate District against Howard Markline, who is one of the co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee.
But she's not the only State Representative, Jenna Jacobson, who's running for a state Senate seat.
Yesterday, State Representative Robin Vining from Wauwatosa announced that she wants to run in the state senate district there, which is currently represented by a Republican from the Brookfield area.
And so I talked to Robin Vining just moments before her official announcement that she made yesterday afternoon.
excited to announce that I'm running for the Fifth Senate District.
We're going to flip the Fifth Senate District and gain control for the Democrats and the Wisconsin State Senate.
Well, the Fifth District is currently represented by Rob Hutton of the Brookfield area.
A lot of folks still associate Waukesha County and some of the near suburbs of Milwaukee as some kind of deep red territory.
And you have proven a couple of times already.
That is not necessarily the case.
That's true.
And I also wouldn't have won in 2018 if independents and Republicans and Democrats hadn't voted for me.
So I think we have more common ground than just your typical ideologies of your two major political parties.
And it's been really fun to get to know people out in Waukesha County and find that common ground.
Let's go back a step because we're going to talk about Senator Hutton and his opposition to the budget in just a sec.
But we need to set that by asking what your decision making process was and how you ultimately voted on the state budget.
Well, first of all, I didn't have a single constituent contact me in support of the state budget.
So not one.
And I had spent the last six months, since January, hearing from constituents on the issues that they care about.
And the top issues that they care about is fully funding the public schools, affordable, accessible health care, making sure that we have a childcare infrastructure, early childhood education that meets the needs of my constituents.
And those would be like really top key issues.
The UW system, we need to fund the UW.
It's a 23 to 1 ROI.
It's with the strongest ROI in the budget.
If not the strongest, it's at the top.
And so I know that the support for fully funding the public schools, early childhood education, our child care, and the UW system is at the top of the list as well as affordable health care.
And yeah, so.
It was it was
not
hard to know where my constituents stood after listening to them for six months.
Yeah.
And yet in this district that you want to run in, you have a senator, a Republican senator who voted no and essentially is taking the polar opposite position that what that the the bill is doing too too much.
already for people.
Definitely not the impression you got from that state budget bill.
We both voted against the budget, but for completely different reasons from my understanding.
I want to see a 90% special education reimbursement rate.
I want to see the schools fully funded.
I don't want to see us continuing this cycle of school referendums across the state in red districts and blue districts.
I went and did the work to find out that 96 of the 99 state representatives, they had school referendums in their districts in just 2024 and 2025.
96 out of 99 representatives.
And this budget that was put before us is going to perpetuate a cycle of referendums that's rising.
it's raising property taxes in an already unaffordable housing situation.
So, I mean, that's how I approach it.
I can't speak for the senator, but when I look at the school funding, when I look at housing costs, when I look at people's concerns about their taxes, my vote was related to those things.
Tell us more about what prompted your run for state senate in terms of what you would like to do, what you've done in the assembly, and what you'd like to take over to the state senate if you were to win next year.
Sure.
So no surprise.
I want to fully fund the public schools.
I want to make sure that we are fighting for affordable health care.
I want to treat child care as early childhood education and honor those early childhood educators.
I want to treat child care as the infrastructure that it is.
I want to make sure that it's quality and affordable.
I want to end gun violence.
I want to treat violence against women and kids with the severity and the urgency that it deserves.
I want to combat climate change.
I'm a small business owner.
I created my own small business from scratch.
I want to support small businesses.
99% of Wisconsin businesses are small businesses.
And I want to be a better support to small businesses across the state of Wisconsin.
So if we have control in the Wisconsin state legislature, that's...
those.
That's a good quick list of things that I want to tackle.
Get folks a quick biography of what you were you talked about being a small business owner.
So tell us a bit more about your story running up to your time serving in the state assembly.
Sure.
So my story in Wisconsin politics really starts in 2011, when my family had had it.
with divide and conquer politics, with the Republican lawmakers who had sworn to serve their constituents, staring down their constituents and using divide and conquer techniques against them.
And so we went
to the capital in 2011 with our two very small children to really reject the Biden-Conqueror politics and fight back for the full funding of our schools and the dignity of work and workers.
And so that was 2011, and we worked, and we worked, and we worked.
And we were not able to increase that school funding to the degree that it needed.
like that we needed and and so in 2018 I really ran as a mom who wanted to see
Better school like better school funding for my kids.
I wanted to see an end to gun violence I don't want to see my kids in gun violence trainings in their classrooms and And I wanted affordable health care for every Wisconsinite I don't I know what it's like to not have much money and to have an EpiPen suddenly increased by a hundred dollars without notice and And so for me it was fully funding
public schools, how we treat workers, what do our medications cost?
Are they affordable?
Ending gun violence and so on.
So then finally, as we look at 2026, there are a lot of unknowns yet.
We're waiting on Governor Evers to make a decision.
We don't know, you know, the impact of, you know, the Trump reconciliation budget, what people are going to say next year versus what Republicans are going to say.
You've got a state Supreme Court race that's going to be run before, you know, your own race gets going for legislative seats.
So knowing that all of this
still off into the future.
What do you think ultimately is going to be the environment of the 2026 election that's going to be successful for you and other Democrats that want to take back control of the legislature?
We're in a situation where we're seeing rising property taxes, right?
And I'm very concerned about that because it's pushing like
families who can barely afford childcare, then their property taxes go up.
How do they stay in their homes?
The same is true for our retired population.
are the Republicans and the policies that they're passing at the state, the taxes that they're putting on people, the cycle of school referendums pushing seniors out of their homes.
So at every generation right now I'm concerned about housing costs and I think that is probably going to play in seeing as the state budget that was just passed is very likely to have like cause some property tax increases.
So I think there's you know that'll be a reality for people.
And then beyond that, I mean, the way I have always run campaigns is what are our shared values?
What do we have in common that we care about?
What is the common ground that we can find that serves the common good?
What are we going to fight for?
I'm not in politics for what we're going to fight against or who we're going to fight against.
What are we fighting for?
What do we care about?
What makes this worth it?
And the community usually speaks
I mean, it's, I've been consistent in my politics.
It's, it's fully funding the public schools.
It's, it's healthcare.
It's ending gun violence.
Um, these are, these are things that people, that's why they work so hard to volunteer on campaigns.
They want this change in the world.
State Representative Robin Vining, a candidate for state Senate.
Robin, thank you so much for your time.
We appreciate it.
Oh, you're welcome.
Thanks so much for having me.
And one comment to share on YouTube, Alicia writes a side note, a friend of mine just bought EpiPens for their two kids over $700 for four EpiPens.
Again, the kind of thing that the, the Biden administration was fighting against and you're not seeing that kind of fight now at all.
Let's return to our week and review panel and Mark, Mark Jacob, Jennifer Schultz, Jim Santel, and what happened Jennifer?
You went sideways on us.
going to
and fix it.
That's fine.
That's fine.
No, go out and come back in, turn it off, turn it on again.
That, that's all right.
Um, Mark, uh,
Wisconsin Congressman Derek Van Orden was mentioned up high in a New York Times article about the way that suddenly all these congressional Republicans had to go from release the Epstein files, release the Epstein files to, well, I trust Donald Trump.
He says that they don't need to be released.
Tell me your evaluation of the coverage of something that seems so blatantly hypocritical.
How did folks do reporting that this week?
I mean, you know, the same thing was true of the Ukraine funding.
You know, suddenly when Trump gets angry at Putin for temporarily, at least, suddenly, you know, all these Republicans who didn't want to fund Ukraine now want to, so or arm them at least.
So the Republicans are not consistent.
And they don't they don't they don't hold themselves to any standards of consistency.
In fact,
people who study dictatorships and tyranny and fascism, note that.
They note that sometimes that inconsistency is even a test of loyalty.
If you have your tyrant says something and then the next day they say something exactly opposite and everyone moves with them, that's a test of loyalty.
So it seems absurd that members of Congress would say one thing one day and the exact opposite the next.
But that's the way this kind of, uh, cult of
personality works.
Jennifer, when it's a such a pivot, um, and journalists, you know, should they be rather explicit about it?
Or do they use kind of the, you know, couching their language that, you know, what he says appears to be at odds with, you know, what was said, blah, blah, blah.
It's, how do you feel about the way reporters go, go into a, let's see, which side of
You know, I think Josh Hawley is a perfect example of how the press did a pretty good job of handling his flip-flop.
You should call it out.
The guy that voted in favor of this bill last week today is introducing a bill to undo it.
You know, just say what happened, but you have to say it and you can't bury it in the story.
No, absolutely not.
Jim Santel, as you look at this as well, and I've only got a couple of seconds here, but I have to think, you've been in a court case where it appears they, you know, they contradict their own story and you're almost like.
I can't wait to jump on this.
And what playing the media does well is just you don't have to talk about it.
Just oppose what you have said on tape yesterday with what you're saying this morning and let the American public come to their own headline about those things.
Donald Trump, this is a perfect example, not only of being inconsistent, but being.
being again responding to what's in the wind and what's in his interest.
A local update is next for some of you.
Others will continue our panel discussion here live from Lake Wissota on these mornings powered by Up North News on the Civic Media Radio Network.
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I also have it on good authority here that Jane Matinair and Greg Bach and Todd Alba have made it to Hayward where their shows will be on the road from the site of the World Lumberjack Championships coming up.
And we'll check in with Jane, Greg and Todd in just a few minutes here.
But we've got a few minutes more with our Week in Review panel, former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel, Mark Jacob and Jennifer Schulze.
And we've already discussed briefly what's coming up in their newsletters here.
But
You guys are always looking at the next thing.
So as you look at this week's headlines, Mark, what kinds of things will you be either looking at doing in your next newsletter or talking to Stephen Beschloss about for your on target video series?
Well, I mean, one thing I've been thinking about is, you know, when he decided that a news outlet is dead to you, I mean, when he was, you have finally given up on him.
And this is actually newly relevant with the CBS stuff.
But I've been especially bemoaning.
the demise of the Washington Post or the demise of the credibility of the Washington Post.
They had another financial columnist quit them this week after saying that one of his columns was spiked, you know, was held because he was too tough on Trump.
And I just think, you know, Philip Bump, one of their, you know, best people has just announced he's leaving.
I mean, it's really a sad thing.
The Washington Post was one of the
best outlets covering the Trump administration and any administration.
And it seems like Jeff Bezos has decided that he needs to protect his businesses by sucking up the Trump.
It really was a tough one for me.
I did cancel my subscription sometime back after that whole
Oh, episode back in January.
The Twin Pillars thing?
Yeah, and it was tough because, I mean, Patrick Marley, formerly of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is just a tremendous reporter, and I would have...
maybe kept the subscription for his reporting, if nothing else, but in the end, I was like, I cannot continue to support these kinds of editorial decisions.
So I completely hear what you're saying.
Jennifer, what kinds of things are you looking at writing up next week?
I'm gonna be looking at the impact of the vote to rescind the funding for public broadcasting and what that means to...
news outlets and news coverage in states like the one next door to us in Indiana.
I mean, Indiana's entire news team, they have a consortium of reporters.
They had to fire all of them because on top of the national cuts, the state legislature in Indiana
also eliminated its funding of public broadcasting in Indiana.
And so if you think about just, we already have news deserts everywhere.
Now we just made, we, I should say Republicans have just made that so much worse.
So
I'm going to
And I mentioned in the six AM hour, I mean, the parallels to Hungary are just striking where you had the government essentially take over public broadcasting and then through, you know, rich friends took over all the private media.
And instead of public universities, you know, they became owned by private foundations whose prize were connected to Victor Orban.
And so, I mean, that's how fascism.
creeps in bit by bit.
Jim, what are you following on amicus a law review tomorrow morning?
On the legal
side of exactly what what mark and Jennifer talking about what happens when a person at the top just decides I want to get rid of these people and you fire them I'll left and right
They're not at will employees, Mr. President, but you're doing just that.
You don't need a schedule F anymore.
You don't need an executive order.
You just wake up in the morning, you get rid of major portions of the Department of Justice, other players inside the federal government.
What does that do short-term and long-term to the integrity of the government?
And again, special focus for me, 30 years inside the Department of Justice watching these groups get
decimated civil rights division, federal programs branch, all these people walking to the door or being shown the door.
That is also the sign.
Again, Donald Trump previously threatened to put together a schedule F, a new executive order.
Not concerned about that anymore.
Simply firing people telling you to leave today.
That's a dramatic impact upon our government and we should all be taking note of it.
more of that with Jim Santel on Amicus Law Review tomorrow morning at 9 a.m.
Jennifer Scholes, these indistinct chatter newsletter you can find on Substack.
Search for at news Jennifer and Mark Jacob has his latest five scenarios for staving off a dictatorship.
Go to stopthepresses.news or careernewsroom.com.
Thank you guys very much for all your information, for your patience.
Have a wonderful weekend.
We'll talk to you next week.
care.
minutes that we've got left here, I think we're going to see if the satellites have aligned properly.
And if Jane, Matt Nair, and Greg Bach, and Todd Alba are hanging out in Hayward, Wisconsin, getting ready to do their shows, mission control to Hayward, what you got over there?
I don't think they do either.
they do.
take them off just in case.
I think maybe you're right.
Why don't you pop yourself on instead there, Parker?
And I'll put them in the waiting room over
we go.
Because I told them we were going to come back to them.
But I also said we were going to do so after the 8 o'clock news as well.
So once again, I would like to thank the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association because you will not have to evaluate this show today.
You're
Some days you write it all down and you go, man, this was good, good work today.
If only we all had to do that every day, do the self evaluation and go, would you turn this into a, would you turn in this episode for an annual award, which you did at work today?
Oh.
I know, but that's, uh, that's the world of broadcasting that we live in.
When we come back after the eight o'clock news, we will indeed hear from Jane McNair and Greg Bach and Todd Alba hanging out in beautiful Hayward, Wisconsin, bringing their shows.
Uh, first Jane and Greg from 9 to 11, then Todd Alba from two to four across the civic media radio network.
And we've got them, Dr. Christian Lairley and Mike Clemens with sports all on the way.
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