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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Mesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
Hey, it's 7 0 6.
It's a Friday morning.
It is the first day of August 2025.
Welcome to the dog days of summer.
I'm packed right low up here in Chippewa Falls.
Parker Olson produces our little festival of radio down at Madison Studio A2 and Brittany Merlot will have our forecast in just a bit.
Coming up this hour yet, we'll have our weekend review panel.
Jennifer Scholesy, Mark Jacob, Jim Santel.
Next hour, we'll be talking to Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez.
She will be talking about her decision to run for governor, talk about her background as a nurse and as a healthcare leader before deciding to run for a seat in the legislature.
We'll ask her what prompted that, had something to do with the way the pandemic was being handled by certain politicians, and what she would do if she were to be elected governor of the state of Wisconsin in November of next year.
So that is all coming up.
One hour from now, Dr. Kristen Lyrely will be along next hour as well.
Mike Clemens will have sports.
We've got the pack of training camp.
We've got the Brewers with a big series against the Washington Nationals this weekend in the nation's capital, which reminds me, it's Free Ticket Friday.
This is your chance to win a four pack of tickets to a Brewers game.
All you have to do is listen, get our keyword, use that Civic Media app.
and text that keyword to us before the end of the show at 9 a.m.
You'll be entered in a statewide contest for four tickets to see the Brewers Mets game next Friday evening, August 8th.
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After all, last week's winner, Jim in Brookfield, listened to, got four different keywords.
And I have no idea which keyword was the one that was pulled that made him a winner.
but I'm taking credit for it because, you know, who's going to stop me?
On the text line, oh, look, it's Jim in Brookfield.
Congratulations, Pat, on three successful years on civic media.
You've provided common sense and a voice of reason in this unstable world of media that we have today, many more years to come.
Thank you, Jim.
Yes, we started this as Up North News Radio three years ago today, August 1st of 2022 as an 8 to 11 in the morning show.
Shortly thereafter, we moved to 6 to 8 in the morning and now recently 6 to 9 a.m.
And it's been a heck of a lot of fun for all 614 shows all this time.
Only 614.
Brittany feels like it's been a thousand or more, but she keeps coming back for more.
And we appreciate every little bit of it.
How's Brittany today?
I'm doing pretty good.
How are you?
I'm good, except that, I mean, there's no way to sugarcoat it.
This smoke is a downer.
It just is.
It's a buzzkill.
And not just from the, you know, the psychological aspect, you know, it's like a fog that never lifts.
But if you have to go outside at all, even if you're young and healthy, you feel it right away in your eyes or someplace.
And so it's a reminder that it's more than a nuisance.
It's something to take seriously.
It really is.
I mean, we've got this wildfire particles that have maxed out.
I mean, yesterday morning, early in the morning, Door County areas far northeast in the state, your particles were at about 225.
That is very unhealthy levels.
We were the worst.
pollution, air pollution in the world yesterday.
That even leaked down towards Milwaukee.
Madison felt that as well.
Just that nasty, nasty haze blocking the sunshine.
It was actually clear skies yesterday, but you could barely see it in a lot of places because it looked like a fog, just a kind of a thin overcast blocking that sunshine.
And a lot of people are kind of getting fed up because it's not the conditions to open up the windows and get some free AC.
while these temperatures are comfortable.
This is the time we're usually trying to save some money on that electric bill and we're not able to because we're keeping the AC on and windows closed to keep that stuff out.
Air purifiers are good to filters too, just different ways to help yourself, but of course try to stay inside and limit wild activity.
I'm not going out there and biking and hiking.
I am staying put and staying inside because it is affecting me too.
I walk outside and I get a massive headache.
Unfortunately, we are still in an active air quality alert through at least noon today.
Unfortunately, I do think it's going to linger here to some capacity through the entire weekend.
Hopefully not unhealthy levels.
Hopefully it'll be thinning out as we go through the afternoon and it's tomorrow.
But the high pressure system that brought it here isn't moving.
That's why we're in this dry stretch.
So I do think a lot of it is going to kind of stick around right now.
It is worse further north and west in the state.
It is starting to ease up to decent moderate levels and towards the lake shore of Lake Michigan, Milwaukee and Madison.
You're seeing some relief there.
So hopefully that'll continue to lift north.
But again, keep in mind parts could start to spike as we go into the weekend still.
High pressure keeps us nice and dry mid to upper seventies today.
upper seventies tomorrow and into the rest of the weekend.
We turn a little bit more muggy next week and the rain holds off until at least Monday night for our north and into Tuesday for the rest of us.
It is so pleasant temperature wise and just so again, it's going to be not rainy.
So I dropped the top on the Jeep.
You know, this would be the best time of year.
to have, you know, just an open air ride.
And we did go for a drive yesterday.
And it just, it wasn't, it wasn't the same because
of
the haze out there.
And of course, driving home, the sunset, I mean, it, they only say you can only look at the sun through like, you know, smoked glass or something like that.
The smoke was so thick, it essentially served as that.
Now again, don't stare right at the sun kids, but I mean, you will, you could
you could never see a sunset that quote-unquote clear, but that brilliantly pink as through the smoke that we've had here.
It was Star Wars-esque, essentially.
It was like being in a science fiction movie.
It really is.
And that's
the positive.
The one positive I can find is beautiful sunrise sunset pictures, but the
rest is.
We do get that.
Yes.
Good morning from Tigerton, says Rob.
It's hazy, smoky sunshine and 49 degrees.
I mowed three yards in rural Tigerton despite the smoke.
They've had a September feel outside.
Today I got a yard to mow and then run some errands.
That smoke does really tire you out.
When I got home from work, I sat down on my recliner and fell asleep for two hours.
I totally get that.
We had Rick Springfield last segment in our history lesson.
When I hear Rick Springfield, I always crank up the radio.
I remember going to Pizza Hut with my family.
I always played Rick Springfield on the jukebox.
I like the nostalgia posts that go up about Pizza Hut.
Pizza Hut in the 80s was as kitschy as it gets and we loved it.
With the fake old timey feel, the stained glass, the jukebox, you usually had Ms.
Pac-Man as a video game to play.
It was a definite slice of time.
In fact, that
sounds awesome.
That sounds
awesome.
It was awesome.
Yeah.
Rob says, thank you, Pat, for your service at Civic Media.
Hope for many more years of service.
Also notes that he's been getting migraine headaches in recent days, working outside.
And Tony on YouTube says, hey, 1990s too.
So Pizza Hut stayed kitschy well into the 90s, which is it's true because I remember they were doing the read a book thing where you'd get the coupons for Pizza Hut if you read so many books and our
those home.
all the time.
Oh, look, we're having, uh, we're having pizza again.
Okay.
Now, now I kind of miss it.
You know, uh, let's see, from Tom and Hartford on the text line, I thought I saw a 39 degree reading up by Land O'Lakes.
I was just going to say when Rob called out the 49 degree, I was like, Oh, I forgot to say 39 degrees in Kings right now.
What?
Yeah.
There's, I was warning for the cranberry marshes about frost because you know the marshes are cooler, they're lower.
They're
likely getting some frost this morning.
Oh my goodness.
All right.
I know.
Brittany, we appreciate the update.
I hope you have a good weekend.
Thanks, you too.
All right.
Stay away from those headaches.
There are a lot of fairs and festivals going on this weekend.
There is of course the Wisconsin State Fair, which got started yesterday in West Alice.
There is
the Head of the Lakes Fair in Superior, the Jackson County Fair in Black River Falls.
Now that's the one Selena Heller will certainly be at.
That's her hometown county fair where she talks about the Combine Demolition Derby.
Yes, where people take combines off of off of farms, not new ones, and smash them into each other.
It's, it's, it's big fun to watch.
I saw the video of it.
Wisconsin Valley Fair in Wausau runs through tomorrow.
The rest of these run through Sunday, the Iron County Fair up in Saxon, the Ozaki County Fair in Cedarburg, Buffalo Pepin County Fair in Mandovi, the Green Lake County Fair in Green Lake, and the Winnebago County Fair in Oshkosh.
There, there's no shortage either of some of the more, shall we say, community festivals that are going on out there.
And you can head over to travelwisconsin.com and you can just simply put in a date range and up will come things like, well, today is the Bonduelle Lions Club corn roast.
Tonight is the downtown Beloit Street Dance.
There's Blues on the Chippewa.
That's underway in Durand.
Jack Pine Savage Days in Spooner.
There's a Saluting Our Heroes balloon rally in Rhinelander this weekend.
Brought days in
in Sheboygan, there's Goat Fest in Jefferson.
That one intrigues me.
Tomorrow, National Mustard Day is celebrated in Middleton, home of the Mustard Museum that's out there.
And I mean, just so much, oh, here's one, Wisconsin IPA Fest in Milwaukee.
It says here is tomorrow.
Parker, you know the best way to handle an IPA when it's been served to you, right?
Drink it quickly.
No, you pour it right down into the drain.
That's exactly how you handle an IPA
I Know yeah
sacrileg get people mad every time when that comes.
Yeah, I mean it depends on the IPA.
I
they're they're all they're all more hoppy than a zoo full of kangaroos.
They just yeah, you have to really like what you like for that.
Yeah
But it depends on your palate.
Look, I think Scotch tastes like gasoline.
I've had, you know, I've had, I've, I've sipped what people say is the finest Scotch out there.
And I'm, I'm pretty sure I would get more miles per gallon in the Jeep.
But, you know, bourbon, which is not that much different, you know, you can taste that.
So beer drinkers as well.
People like what they like.
And I like beer.
If you like, if you like an IPA, well, there you go.
There's the festival for you coming up.
The Brewers were off yesterday.
They are headed toward Washington, DC.
They're there now for a series against the Washington Nationals.
And they are still on top of the National League Central Division by game over the Cubs.
Are you working Madison Mallard games this weekend?
Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Oh, go look
Better not be smoky tonight.
No, I got bad news for you.
Sorry about that.
This from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Lawrence Andrea.
has an article about Congressman Brian Stile holding an in-person town hall.
So you gotta give him a little credit for that, but he was met with consistent booing.
last night as scores of attendees jeered the Jamesville Republican over his support for President Donald Trump's policies.
Style, it says in the newspaper article here, struggled to get through answers from a crowd of more than 250 people gathered in the Elkhorn area high school auditorium.
Many interjected with yells of disagreement over everything from border security to tariffs to Trump's recently signed mega bill.
It was the first in-person town hall for any Wisconsin Republican since House Republican leadership in March advised members to avoid in-person events.
It was Stiles first in-person session since January.
Stiles in the article it says here from Lawrence, Andrea, backed Trump's efforts on immigration.
He defended the administration's dismantling of the Department of Education and he stood by Trump's use of tariffs.
He mentioned the national debt as a challenge facing the country and one attendee yelled thanks to you and That to me.
I mean it negates any goodwill that congressman style did by having an in-person town hall.
I mean, you know There's expressions I could use but I can't use on the radio But don't don't tell somebody that the national debt is a problem when you just voted to to make it four trillion dollars worse
A local update is next for some of you and our week in review panel coming up here.
I'm Pat Crichtlow.
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.
All right, again, thanks for the anniversary wishes from folks here.
Tom and Hartford, a voice of reason, a good description of Pat's radio style.
That's so nice.
Thank you.
The key word again is fly for free ticket Friday.
If you want to win brewers tickets for next Friday's game.
You want to get to the Civic Media app and you want to text us the keyword fly before nine o'clock and then there will be more keywords, more chances to win with programs throughout the day here across the Civic Media radio network and the Brewers tonight are in Washington DC playing the Nationals starting at 510.
That's the start of pregame.
for your Milwaukee, your first place Milwaukee Brewers.
We're joined now as always on Fridays by former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel and veteran journalist Mark Jacob and Jennifer Schulze.
And again.
veteran journalist.
We know what that means.
Do we?
We're old.
You get to put veteran before our name here and you know what?
That's that's brought some wisdom and they're bringing wisdom to their newsletters and shows that we will be talking about over the next few minutes here.
I hope that you're all doing well.
Mark, you've got a in your latest newsletter and you can get that to stopthepresses.news but you talk about
subscriptions and new sources.
And you and I are in the same boat where, you know, the Washington Post has had good reporting.
The New York Times has had good reporting.
They've sometimes had weak reporting.
But I have, it's the only subscription I've ever canceled was the Washington Post one.
I'm still getting the New York Times, even though I have trouble with them.
Can you explain, you know, why you and I and others feel that way about which one you subscribe to and which one you subscribe to, but you still, you know,
kind of, I don't know, how do you describe reading the New York Times nowadays, you know, skeptical, I guess.
Yeah,
I mean, to me, it's a real tragedy.
I mean, you have the newspaper that hounded a criminal president out of office in the 1970s is now kissing up to a criminal president.
And you have, and basically, Pat, yeah, they're still good.
reports in the Washington Post by good reporters.
But talent is fleeing.
And the reason talent is fleeing is that it knows that the owner cannot be relied upon, that the owner is sucking up to Trump.
He's giving donations to Trump.
He did that $400 million deal for a Melania Trump documentary.
Let me tell you, that's not going to break any big exposés or anything.
You know, he banned that he wouldn't let the Washington Post do an endorsement of Kamala Harris last time.
There are just so many signs that the Washington Post is cowtowing Trump.
And the staff knows it.
That's why all the big talent is fleeing.
And yet we still we pay for the New York Times, despite the flaws that we find there sometimes.
Yeah, I mean the thing about the New York Times is I think its ownership and its leadership is not compromised in the same way that the Washington Post clearly is.
I mean they make a lot of bad decisions all on their own.
You know it's like this independent bad decisions rather than decisions that are designed to suck up to the would-be dictator.
So I mean to me that's the difference.
I mean it's not a great endorsement of the New York Times, but that's that's the way I view it.
Yeah, Jennifer, your latest is indistinct chatter on substack and the title is let it burn the Trump administration short changing America's emergency response efforts in order to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.
Why did you take that angle on emergency response?
Well, I think one of the more under reported stories, especially if you're not in an area that's been hit by hazardous weather is how how
detrimental the Trump administration has been to things that we in the past have taken for granted.
You know, I've written a lot about the National Weather Service.
They're gutting the National Weather Service, but simultaneously FEMA and other
disaster response agencies that the government has played a huge role in.
And we can see it now with the fires that are mostly in the West.
But really, if you look at a map of wildfires, it's the whole country.
Alaska has the highest number.
And the Trump administration has compromised things that
Local governments and residents have taken for granted there aren't enough firefighters the firefighters are being redirected to do other things including cleaning toilets to make up for shortfalls and other staffing and it's a real problem and You know, nobody's died yet from the wildfires to firefighters in New Mexico came very close You know, it's a precarious place to be and I think it's an abdication of what our government has done and what we expected to do
and
Jim, tell us about Amicus, a law review that will be heard 9 to 11 tomorrow morning, replayed on Sunday mornings.
What are you following this week?
At birthright citizenship, we know what the Supreme Court did not do a few weeks back, but we've got all kinds of judges around the country who are saying, you know what?
The Supreme Court is simply wrong, which is a stunning thing.
One judge in particular said, just because the president says something doesn't make it so, which has certainly always been the case.
But in midst of all of that, we've also got the USCIS, which is a part of Homeland Security.
Now issuing memorandums, talking about what they're going to do, yes, that's right, arguably to deport babies who have not properly been acknowledged as citizens in this nation.
And that memorandum coming out fairly soon, the impact of that, moving forward by this administration to implement what the Supreme Court has said that it apparently can do now that the hiatus on that executive order from January 20th is suspended.
And of course, we've got the fight going on in all areas, executive branch, judicial branch, maybe heading back to the Supreme Court at some point in an issue that we thought was resolved in the latter half of the 19th century in America.
It's back again.
Yeah.
Again, fights that we never thought we'd have to fight again, and things that we took for granted.
And we're learning the hard way not to take them for granted.
if we can get things back to what we used to think of as normal.
We'll continue our discussions with our Week in Review panel after the Midwest Farm Report across the Civic Media Radio Network with a reminder that coming up in our next hour, Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez will be here talking about her decision to run for governor in next year's election.
Dr. Kristen Lierly will be along, Mike Clemens will have sports for us, and again, free ticket Friday, the keyword...
From now till 9 a.m., text us the keyword fly, f-l-y, and be in the drawing for four Brewer's Tickets to next Friday night's game.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Free Ticket Friday, you can win Brewer's Tickets, so we're having a statewide drawing after several keywords on several shows throughout the day here.
This particular show's keyword is fly, as in, you know, a fly ball out to center field, FLY.
Text that using the Civic Media app, and you could be in the running for four Brewer's Tickets to next Friday night's game.
Brewer's versus the match, you have to be able to receive electronic tickets on your phone and use them.
If so, use that Civic Media app and text us the word fly.
Continuing with former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel.
Now, Mark Jacob, Jennifer Scholes, you all here as part of our Week in Review.
There are stories that I just know would be different if there was an R next to it or a D next to it instead of an R. One of the most egregious ones, Jim, Justice Department dismisses case against a Trump donor.
In early April, Donald Trump's White House, according to MSNBC, fired a career federal prosecutor in California because a right-wing influencer told the president that he should.
Nearly four months later, Trump's Justice Department has dropped a case against the restaurant group Fat Brands and its chairman, Andy Weederhorn.
which was the case the prosecutor was working on at the time of his ouster.
He happens to be a five-figure donor to the Trump campaign, I don't know, coincidence or not.
It is tough to give this Justice Department the benefit of the doubt in making decisions on Trump donors, Jim.
This is yet another illustration, both the termination of a civil servant, let's not forget that, who's doing his job in prosecuting cases.
And also the erasure, this complete busting down of any wall that previously existed, even to some extent in Trump one term between the White House and the Department of Justice, you do not want a president
For precisely these reasons, picking up the phone and calling people, it means justice and saying, I want this person prosecuted.
I want this case suspended.
I want this to stop.
This is another example of that.
And it not only undermines the basic focus of the Department of Justice, it produces situations where justice is not being accomplished criminally, civilly, when it comes to the ways in which we enforce our laws, if a president of the United States of America can now, as he is doing,
as he is doing, use the Department of Justice to reward his friends, punish his enemies.
That's not a Department of Justice.
The only agency that has its name and aspiration, that is something else not working for us.
It's another example of the diminution of that relationship between the White House and the appropriate relationship with people and the Department of Justice.
And more of that to come, certainly in the next three and a half
years.
So moving that from the Department of Justice, Mark, to the newsrooms, Andy Widerhorn is this guy's name.
You can look up his public support.
We've seen the pardons that Trump has given to people who have been supporters or donors.
I feel like the American public should know the name of Andy Widerhorn as well as they know Hunter Biden's name, because this and all these are such naked corruption.
And yet, again, I feel like the news stories they would do if there were a Democrat in the White House are not, there seems to be a reason why I'm only seeing this on MSNBC's website.
It's like, well, all right, so Trump rewarded one of his friends with a pardon or ordered the dropping of an investigation or charges.
I mean, the Eric Adams thing in New York City is like a gigantic scandal.
If that had happened in democratic administration, you know, if you had killed an investigation or after an indictment, if you had decided to drop the case because just to help for someone to help you on some sort of policy matter, that would have been an enormous scandal.
And so I think that the corruption, Trump's corruption is so obvious to the news media that they've decided it's normal.
And the lack of this kind of maintained outrage about things like that is one of the things that's really kind of causing us to slide into fascism.
I mean, when you start tolerating those things, people get away with it more and more, and the public just kind of turns off.
Jennifer, the way that we've normalized it, it also deals with framing things under Trump's actions.
All right, here's the Associated Press headline.
President Trump calls GOP Senator Josh Hawley second tier after a bill to ban stock trades in government advances.
So the story is about, you know, Trump criticizing a Republican senator rather than Trump is standing in the way of a popular bill to stop members of Congress from gambling on Wall Street.
But we, again, we frame it as Trump going on offense against the fellow Republican.
That's not the greater issue here.
So that's no surprise.
I do think a big part of the problem is that there is a media outrage machine
only on one side of the aisle.
And it is huge.
And I would argue it sets the agenda for what the news media covers and how outraged people are, how continuous the coverage is.
And when stories live and die in the regular media, it's because mostly I think of how right wing media covers it.
If right wing media wants to get crazy, for example, about the Sidney Sweeney ad and make up a story about that so that they don't have to talk about Epstein, that will work its way into regular media.
They set the agenda and it's really unfortunate because what they want to talk about and what they don't want to talk about is mostly what's breaking through to America, I think.
You posted, you reposted something from the Atlantic and the headline there was Republicans want to redraw America's political map.
And we spoke in our last hour with Matt Henney from Courier, Texas about the legislature, you know, once again, gerrymandering the Texas map.
And you posted it with this alternative headline, Republicans want to seize power and never give it up.
That seems to me a bit more honest than Republicans want to redraw America's political map.
Redrawing a map does not sound nearly as nefarious as this actually would be.
Well and part of the problem too is that gerrymandering, I know you guys know it well in Wisconsin and it's talked about a lot there, but it's not really a hot topic in a lot of the country and I get a guess most people don't know what it means and they surely don't know the impacts of it.
That's a story that's a five alarm fire, what's happening in Texas with the map and the impact on the whole country.
And I think there's a lot more work to be done on that to make sure that people are aware of what it means and how it could impact so many things.
And so yeah, when I saw the Atlantic headline, the story itself explains what's going on in Texas, but it's bigger than that.
And so it's kind of like, oh, blah, blah, blah.
No, this is a.
could be a national problem like what just happened in El Salvador.
They just voted to basically make a president for life.
Well, I kind of feel like we are heading in that direction.
Oh, we it definitely has that feel to it, especially when you see how this wasn't even on Texas legislators radar initially and certainly not to this level till Trump said do this and they immediately fell into line.
Jim, we talked in the last hour about this.
I mean, Democratic lawmakers, you know, could walk out.
They could, you know, flee the state again, but it only delays the inevitable.
Where are we from the standpoint of.
challenging such obvious political corruption in our maps.
Are they feeling that good about where the court system is these days that they can draw a map this bad?
They shouldn't be because you do have both state courts and federal courts who are looking at these kinds of things and addressing whether or not there is, again, inappropriate racial gerrymandering.
We know political gerrymandering
is no longer on the agenda of the federal court sets as a result of the Supreme Court a number of years ago, but courts are still looking at these things.
Interestingly, you may recall just in this past term, the Supreme Court, in a case coming out of Louisiana, decided not to decide and bumped that one into the coming term.
That's a very interesting case to take a look at, come the fall and into next year to determine whether or not the basis, the purpose for redrawing Louisiana.
lines was racially motivated.
It has to do with the number of black predominant majority districts in that state.
The courts are still wrestling with this.
The other thing I would offer is, you know, as we've talked before, so many times state legislatures, the federal legislature can if it wants.
And yes, I know we've got to have the numbers to do it.
do oversight of these things.
Let's have some inquiries on Capitol Hill and here in the state of Wisconsin in Madison addressing these issues.
What is going on?
It should be geared ultimately towards some legislative purpose, but it can simply be informative and describing for the legislators what is happening among their constituents.
Those kinds of things should be moving ahead, obviously, in the present Congress.
We don't have that because the majority, maybe when the 120th Congress is sworn in in early January of 2027, there will be a movement to get more oversight on all of this.
perhaps.
A lot of this serves as a distraction from the economic turmoil out there and I say that because the new jobless figures just came out for the month of July and anemic doesn't begin to describe it.
Non-farm payroll for July up only 73,000 jobs.
That is, again, like we were saying yesterday with Sean O'Malley,
it's not a recession, but don't give Donald Trump credit for us not being in a recession and for only taking us to the precipice of one.
Mark, you reposted an article about how a newly declassified part of the so-called Durham report shows that Republicans used a Russian manufactured email as evidence, quote unquote, that Hillary Clinton conspired with Russia
I mean, again, this should be a blockbuster headline that Republicans either enabled themselves to be duped or willingly used false information.
I haven't read this enough to know which one it is, but neither one is a good look.
And isn't it interesting that we're just finding out about this now?
Yeah.
I mean, you know, the Durham report, you know, is years ago.
And it's all part of the attempt by the right wing.
To pretend that the Russian involvement never happened, you know, I mean I mean it their ability or their attempt at least to erase history Don't you just completely rewrite the facts is amazing.
It's and it's very Soviet
I mean, it's very much, you know, kind of, it's Orwellian, really.
You know, let's pretend something didn't happen because, you know, that meeting at Trump Tower with the Russians did happen.
We know it happened.
A lot of Russian officials were indicted by Mueller after his investigation.
I mean, we know there was involvement there.
And for this Trump to say, Russia, Russia, Russia, and that's just code for the right-wing thinking that the whole thing was made up.
When we know it wasn't made up, it wasn't.
And for them to try to erase history is really scary because if they can do that, they can erase everything.
I mean, as a journalist, the assault on facts is the scariest thing to me.
The fact that they, that, because if you don't have a shared set of facts in a society, you can't have a functioning democracy.
You just can't.
And their assault on things that are demonstrably true is frightening.
It comes back to, again, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and maybe he was or wasn't the first one to say, you are entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.
And that is not the world we live in anymore.
I mean, facts are still facts, but there are some people that feel like they have their own facts.
And if they just say them enough,
enough people will believe them to keep them in power.
A local update is coming up next for some of you for the rest, whether you're watching us on Facebook or YouTube or the Civic Media app, we're going to continue yapping here for a few minutes more with a weekend review panel.
And then we'll all be back together here at 805.
And at that point, we are going to be talking to Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez about her run for governor.
It's been eight days now since Governor Tony Evers announced he would not be running for a third term.
Sara Rodriguez is the first Democrat to announce and we're going to learn all about that.
Coming up right after the eight o'clock news here on these mornings powered by Up North News live from Lake Wissota on the Civic Media Radio Network.
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One of the headlines today deals with the latest round of tariffs that have come out from the Trump administration.
It is, Mark Jacob, I mean, it's whack-a-mole type of policy.
There seems to be no rhyme or reason to how it's done, and it just seems to be part of
the Trump playbook is just overwhelmed people with all kinds of little things and it'll divert attention from some of the big things.
We have not talked about the, you know, the continued discrepancies and the holes in the story about Jeffrey Epstein and Glenn Maxwell and all that because we've got so many other ping pong balls to chase, it feels like.
Yeah.
I do think we should focus on tariffs though a little bit because I mean, let's just follow the let's pretend that this is there's rule of law in this country.
And
The only way that Trump can do these tariffs is if there is a national emergency, a new and unusual national emergency.
Well, he's imposing 50 percent tariffs on Brazil because the Brazil court is prosecuting a former Brazil official Bolsonaro.
Now, how does that affect Americans?
I mean, how is that an emergency in the United States?
Yet he's doing it.
I mean, he's just to help a fellow fascist.
It's crazy.
And so this is not, he's totally abusing the tariff process.
And, you know, my grandfather was born in Canada.
I like Canadians.
I think most Americans like Canada.
But Trump doesn't.
Trump is like making war on Canada.
It's insane.
It's against what Americans want and believe them.
It's also against what's said in the Constitution of the United States of America, which is baked into what Mark just said.
It's the Congress.
Let's all say it together.
It's the Congress that has got that capacity.
That's James Madison stuff with the exception of the emergencies.
Mark is just right.
Otherwise, it comes from the Congress.
We've got judges now once again saying that, finding that this is unconstitutional.
Enforcement is another issue when you've got a president who says, I don't care what federal judges do, but that should be the headline too, right?
President Trump, again, unconstitutionally proposing across the board huge new tariffs and print Article 1 of the Constitution as a part of the insert in that article.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
And that's, again, that's a word that when it is so blatant, you know, people shouldn't be afraid to use it.
And yet they do other things, you know, when I think about Canada for a minute here, I mean, that's not.
We hear about the racist aspects of what Trump does because, you know, he has been and always will be, you know, as racist as they come with the entire self denial that comes with it.
But Jennifer, there's also beyond that when you look at Canada, that's just flat out xenophobia.
And again, xenophobia is one of those words and $5 words that a lot of people don't follow, but it is, you know, they frame it as America first, but it's not America first.
It's America only.
And somehow, if you've roused it up enough people to hate anything that's not America, even Canada, that's the foundation for a political movement.
That's not what I thought I'd see in the year 2025, but here we are.
and
you know there's quite a tourism industry going both ways that has been completely disrupted by this and it's just one of those crazy things because we've had you know they're like
Friends, Canadians, right?
No one thinks of them as some kind of hostile power that we need to be hating on and Americans aren't agreeing with Trump on that.
They're not agreeing with him on tariffs.
They do see through what he's doing.
I think the news media could do a better job of just showing how erratic it is.
I wish somebody was doing a tracker or a ticker to show how many deadlines there have been and how many changes.
But Americans do see the tariff stuff as not a pot.
They don't think it's positive at all.
No.
And again, poll after poll shows all of this.
But once you've got
power, you know, in other words, once you've fooled enough people to actually amass some power, well, to hell with what the majority thinks, you know, here at this point, that includes the Senate confirmation of a Trump attorney.
to a lifetime appointment on an appeals court.
Again, despite whistleblowers and Mark, you reposted somebody that said, put it very well, a Trump guy could shoot someone on the floor of the Senate and still get confirmed at this point.
In any reasonable world, Amel Beauvais should have been voted down and should be impeached immediately for lying under oath.
But
He ordered Justice Department officials to ignore court orders.
And the whistleblowers said it.
And the Trump administration kind of, one of the whistleblower reports sat investigated for two months.
I mean, this is why, at the start of the Trump administration, when they got rid of so many inspectors general, they got rid of people who were supposed to worry about ethics.
And this is because he's gonna be violating ethics all the time.
Yeah, Mark Jacobs newsletter get it at stopthepresses.news as latest as why the Washington Post is dead to me and then there is Jennifer Schulze's over on Indistinct Chatter on Substack look for it there Her latest is let it burn the Trump administration short-changing America's emergency response efforts in order to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and of course there is amicus a law review that you get from Jim Santel That's gonna be coming up this Saturday
and then replay it on Sunday across the Civic Media radio network.
Appreciate all of you.
Thank you for being here.
Have a great start to the weekend and we'll see you next week.
All right.
When we come back, we're going to be a little first, of course, will be the eight o'clock news.
And then we're going to be talking to Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez about her decision to run for governor in 2026.
She has been Lieutenant Governor for two and a half years.
She was in the state legislature prior to that.
And we're going to get into what prompted her to run for legislature and what she would do as governor.
Dr. Kristen Lierly will be part of the discussion as well.
And we'll also
to be talking later with Mike Clemens to have sports as we get set for the weekend.
I'm Pat Krightlo.
You're listening to the Civic Media Radio Network.
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