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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, from our Lake Mesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
Thank you, Don Rue.
It is 8.06 on this sixth day of August.
It's a Wednesday morning.
Nice to have you here up north.
Parker Olsen is producing this fine program down in Madison at Studio A2.
Earl Ingram is standing by in Milwaukee in just a bit.
First, we're going to bring in meteorologist Brittany Merleau for an update on a forecast.
that is less smoky, but it's going to be hot and it's going to be a little wetter than it has been lately.
Welcome to summer.
It's changing.
Yeah, we do.
It's one of those, you know, we used to say we'd love to joke in the Midwest if you don't like the weather, you know, wait five minutes, it'll change.
And I think that's what's made things a little weird around here is that we've had this smoky weather for
so many days in a row now.
It's not like us to have a situation stick around for a long time, but change is finally going to be a constant once again around Wisconsin.
I think a lot of us are welcoming that right now.
We're
a little
sick of this wildfire smoke still lingering.
It is actually getting thicker right now in the southern parts of the state near Madison.
It's even creeping up to unhealthy levels for all of us into the Appleton area.
Stevens Point is also seeing levels, AQIs in the 150 range.
So it's getting worse right now in central and southern Wisconsin as we've got winds moving in the northern part of the state.
So that's why it's cleared out of that area much more and it's still kind of hanging out south and east.
So an air quality alert still in effect until noon.
I do think that the winds are going to start to shift off of the lake, Lake Michigan and really start to get gusty probably this evening, early this evening.
So if it's not gone by this afternoon.
early this evening, it is going to get on out of here.
We've got another system moving in.
It's already starting to push some light drizzle scattered sprinkles in towards superior and the Hayward area.
Eau Claire, you could see a few of those over the next hour or two, and then it's going to be working its way through the state.
So clouds increasing this afternoon, chances for spotty drizzle, nothing major.
And of course, temperatures hitting those low to mid 80s today.
Now by tomorrow, it's going to become muggy low to mid 80s.
So feeling warmer than it will today.
and we're turning hot and humid too.
Got a lot of weather still to deal with tomorrow.
We're looking at overnight maybe some rain and thunder and we could see some more lingering still into Friday morning.
Friday is the hot and humid day.
We're talking temperatures pushing 90 degrees humidity dew points in those mid 70s.
So feeling more like the mid upper 90s, both Friday and Saturday before cold front hits us on Saturday.
and then takes its time moving through the state on Sunday.
So a lot more severe chances moving in over the weekend, but still scattered showers and storms expected by tonight and through tomorrow.
But the nineties are coming back for a little visit here.
Yeah, right.
We have spent so much time indoors in air conditioning, even when it was hot because of the smoke
that we
haven't really had the chance to like enjoy the nineties in terms of, you know,
What's your getaway?
When it's really hot and you're not in the house, do you want to be at a pool, a lake?
Do you have a favorite way to get away or deal with the hot weather when you're outside?
I sure do.
It's definitely the water.
Any type of water.
I stand up paddleboard.
So that's
nice.
No.
Oops, I fell in
or you can lay on it.
Yeah.
Right.
Oopsies.
But I love, love, love going up to Lake Superior, especially right now in August when the water is warm enough to actually get in.
But it's crisp and cool.
And you also get that lake breeze too.
So it's cooler by the lake.
I love Lake Superior.
I have discovered shade.
Good job, Pat.
I've discovered that if you've got a hammock and you can get that hammock in just the right shady spot where you can get whatever little breezes there, but you're not getting the sun.
I mean, it's no substitute for a lake or a pool, but it's not a bad runner up.
Oh that is so relaxing and the breeze
going through the leaves
and you're
just reading a book on the M.S.
Yeah or a pontoon or an open Jeep and then just gun it.
So give yourself a breeze.
That all works well too.
Brittany, thank you so much.
Hope you have a great day.
Thanks you too.
All right, let's bring in Earl Ingram and you can get his podcast what's going on with Earl Ingram by heading over to civicmedia.us and learning more.
Earl, let's start with the hot weather here.
Good morning.
Hope you're well.
I know that growing up in the city
like I did.
I mean, we didn't have community pools.
All right, you had to go to one of the lakes and hope that you didn't get chiggers, you know, swimmer's itch.
And sometimes you did and you needed that calamine lotion and everything.
But you know, those lakes were the only thing that we had going people going to the Chippewa River or Lake Altoona, whatever.
You know, what, how would you best describe a hot weather getaway if you got to deal with the heat around your neck of the woods?
Well, you know,
You know going down by the lake you know I think one of the things that people might miss about the city of Milwaukee is we're on a lake and they don't it's not talked about much but you know you're not far away from a beautiful Lake Michigan and you know it's it's a bus ride a city bus ride away
And you can get there and it is spectacular.
The view is spectacular and there's a lot of activities there on that lake.
And so that's always a great place for me to go.
It's very scenic.
And I think it's just kind of taken for granted.
Yeah, no, when I lived there in the late 80s, early 90s, the city slogan was a great place by a great lake.
And I don't know why they stopped using that because it works perfectly there.
They love to talk about it being cooler by the lake.
And they take that not just as a weather thing, but as life, life is a little cooler by the lake.
It's a wonderful air conditioner when you get a chance to get down and enjoy it.
But
young people especially take advantage of it.
Yeah, very much so.
But of course, you normally don't get to hang out by the lake because you're like me, you're you're working too much.
And if I'm still doing at at 71 being 61 now, when I get to be 71 like you, if I'm still working this hard, I hope somebody chides me the way I'm chiding you and telling you to enjoy the lake a little bit more often.
But you are you keep working, you've got this podcast going, we're going to talk about Negro League history in a sec.
But you're continuing your conversations with Dr. Howard.
and we're gonna get into the ongoing problem of literacy, something that I worked on here in the Chippewa Valley, something that is an ongoing problem throughout Wisconsin, certainly no different down where you are in Milwaukee.
You know, I think what has transpired is technology.
There's several things and reasons why literacy is such a major issue in this country.
America ranks anywhere between 14th and 125th.
In literacy and in this in this world and depending on who's you know doing the figuring The fact even if we're 14th The people should stop and pause and take a look at that because it wasn't so long ago That America was you know in the top three four five when you and I were youngsters and
to see that we've fallen that far and I think there are many different reasons.
Technology clearly is one of those the way reading had been taught.
When I was a young boy it was phonics and some brilliant person decided that whole language was a way to teach children.
We tinkered with that for decades and found out that that was really a major mistake but I believe somebody made a lot of money off of that deal.
and young people have suffered.
Clearly, COVID has something to do with it, but technology and all those things, it is Dr. Fuller's belief that the way reading is being taught and that educators, through no fault of their own, don't know how to teach reading anymore.
And so he's challenging universities.
There's a new...
reading plan that he has in place.
And for those who don't know Dr. Fuller, he's one of the foremost people in this nation when it comes to education.
And so, you know, we're going to continue to have these conversations with Dr. Fuller about what has happened to young people in reading and education.
Yeah, and it's work that, look, if somebody gets through the entire school process.
and they're still having literacy issues.
It's a very real thing that prevents you from getting, you know, a better job than maybe the lower pain one that you've got.
The work that I did for about a decade with literacy volunteers of the Chippewa Valley showed that in it doesn't matter where you are.
There are people who for various reasons either they kind of didn't take their learning seriously and they skated through or they faced other
environmental reasons why learning was not really, um, encouraged and fostered under their roof.
And so I would just urge people to continue to support not just, you know, their schools for teaching literacy, but the organizations that try to help out as well.
And again, Earl, it's, you know, it's everywhere.
It's not Milwaukee.
It's, it's, it's across this nation.
Like you just said, where we need to take literacy much more seriously than, than folks did for a while.
Let me ask you.
It's having said what you just said and I'm in agreement with you 100% Taking off PBS doesn't make it any better.
No My
goodness.
No, no It is just we we don't even I don't want to get too far in this soapbox, but you know for when you talk about technology
We have tools that are out there and we're not using them.
And in fact, we're removing some of the tools like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS.
But even if you come back during the pandemic, mini rant coming here.
Not long ago all the TV stations were given multiple channels, okay?
You can go to channel 4 and they got 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 and what do you see on there?
Nothing but oldies old movies things like that what they told us at the time was we're gonna use some of those sub channels for like, you know public service and education and why during the pandemic you didn't see more of these TV stations using you know 4.2 6.2 12.2 to allow educators
to continue talking to the kids is a mystery I will, I will never get over.
And I forgive, please forgive the mini rant.
But when you bring that up, it really hits a sore point with me that we could be doing so much better in our media addressing learning and especially literacy.
You know, I almost believe that this is done for a nefarious reason.
And, you know, if you've been around long enough, you can kind of see
that it certainly does not make sense that for a nation that prides itself in a robust future.
If children can read, the future of the nation is not very bright.
know, and not if you're undermining, you know, our public schools as well through, you know, things like austerity type budgets.
And forgive me, I had so much to say about that that I've eaten up a lot of our time.
Are you able to hang around after the break and talk about the Negro Leagues?
Absolutely.
All right, I'd appreciate that.
Some of you will have a local break coming up here in just a moment.
And if you don't get a chance to hear us, come back and subscribe to the show as a podcast.
And then you can just catch
that on demand anytime, head over to Spotify or Apple and subscribe as a podcast or head over to civicmedia.us.
Every one of our hours is an episode and you can just listen back to the episode of that particular hour about what we do.
And by the way, the same goes for your local cut ins.
You can head to your local civic media station and listen back to the work that's being done on the local level.
All right, before that break, I've got just enough time to talk to you about the brewers because again,
five games in a row for the Brewers.
They beat Atlanta 7-2 last night.
The current winning streak for the Brewers is five games.
Their lead over the Chicago Cubs is now four games in the National League Central Division.
Freddy Peralto in five innings allowed only one run on four hits.
Andrew Vaughn singled in two runs.
He now has an 11 game hitting streak that matches the longest of his career and Isaac Collins candidate for National League Rookie of the Year.
Well, he drove in two
runs on two hits as well.
Jose Quintana starts game three.
Pre-game across several civic media stations can be heard starting at 540.
From the heart of America's up north, live from Lake Wissota, thanks for making this the place to spend part of your mornings.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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newsroom.com.
Continuing our conversation here with Earl Ingram and Earl, I know I said we were going to get to Negro League history, but I've caught myself now in reading that promo about Texas and gerrymandering and noting that today is the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
And I don't care how cynical anybody is.
I don't know who in 1965 could have said that in 2025,
We're seeing the kinds of naked, racist, partisan redistricting that we're seeing in Texas.
But again, when you remove the guardrails, as the US Supreme Court did back in 2013, I guess we shouldn't be a bit surprised that we're seeing this happen in Texas, should we?
You know, Pat, it is, it is more than frustrating as I watch the clocks being turned back on the gains.
that took place during the time that I was a young boy and it always takes me back to my dad who had to live through a time that inequality was the order of the day for the majority of his life.
And as a very young man watching Dr. Martin Luther King in the Civil Rights struggle and the fight
It took place to make it possible for a young boy like me to be able to get an education in the system that was different than what my parents and my grandparents had to go through.
It's really disheartening as now you see your great-grandchildren looking at the same kind of reality that your father and your grandparents look to.
And I think
that the part of this that is so heart wrenching is that who's left to fight for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren is the battle that was waged in the 1960s for equality and those kinds of things.
There were great people who came together, black and white, who fought for justice.
And I just don't see that on the horizon with the future.
generations to take this battle on.
So it's it's more than frustrating as heartbreaking.
I couldn't I couldn't agree more.
That's a that's a perfect way to describe it and enraging at the same time here because again we know what history is like and that's what we're going to close with with with the history of segregation in this country that included the professional baseball leagues and
Look, we're not going to sugarcoat the past, you know, that this was, again, just naked racism and segregation.
But in having a separate Negro Negro leagues, at least all these years later, we can now look back and celebrate the achievements and the accomplishments.
Again, we're not condoning the environment of the time, but we can certainly celebrate the ball that was played and the advances that were made or also tell us about about your latest podcast episode.
Well, so there's this wonderful man is 90 years young.
His name is Dennis Biddle.
He played in the Negro League, played in Major League Baseball, and he carries the history on his shoulders.
He is the archival person for the Negro League.
And there's only two Negro League players still left alive at 99 and 97.
There's 52.
who play in the Negro Leagues and Major League Baseball and the gentleman that I'm having these podcast with, Dennis Biddle, is the guy who can tell the story unlike any others.
And I think it's just a fascinating, fascinating story that we're going to be telling about what took place.
Dennis Biddle was born in 1935 in Alabama.
And so he'll tell the story from a young boy who was in the cotton fields and all the way up and wound up with an education, but it was able to make it all the way to, you know, having conversations with then commissioner bud Selick and putting in place pensions for.
some of those players who played in the Negro League and Major League Baseball.
It's a fascinating, fascinating story that we're going to be telling and the first episode dropped, I think, last week.
It's the first of many.
All right, so look for that.
And all that Earl's working on over at civicmedia.us slash shows.
There's also a newer episode, the second part of a discussion on healthy lungs with Dr. Jonathan Kerman.
And you talk about something called BLVR.
We got about a minute left.
Can you describe BLVR and why folks would want to listen to this series?
So BLVR is a new way of dealing with COPD and other lung issues.
BLVR is a process where they take very small entities and put them through your mouth and the parts of your lungs that have been deteriorated and this shuts off that part of the lung and allows
free breathing through the other part of it.
I'm just excited about my relationship with Frater and the Medical College of Wisconsin that they give me all of these doctors and we're going to continue to have this information on these podcasts because it's so critically important for everybody to know that there's advanced technology and that you don't have to suffer the way we once did.
civicmedia.us slash shows and get the what's going on with Earl Ingram podcast.
Earl, it's always a pleasure.
Thank you so much.
Enjoy the rest of your week.
Thank you as well.
All right.
Coming up next, we'll do our climate check with Melissa Baldoff and we will be joined by Casey Hicks of Wisconsin Conservation Voters.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
You're up north.
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Time for our climate check.
Melissa Baldoff with us as well as Casey Hicks from Wisconsin Conservation Voters.
It is nice to have you both here.
Casey, I'm going to set this up with familiar territory from me and Melissa.
Melissa, how many times have we likened what's happening in Washington, D.C.
right now to like, you know, the super villains in Hollywood?
disaster blockbuster.
I mean it's
times.
It's been the narrative for a reason.
Because it's
Well yeah because it's happening and the most recent one that we wanted Casey to talk about comes from Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Now we have to put protection and quotation marks that says that they are going to rescind what's known as the endangerment finding
It's one of the basic building blocks of protecting our climate.
And Casey's going to explain what it is, but as he explains this, I just want you to keep the visual in mind that the EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, did all this while speaking at a truck dealership in Indianapolis.
I want to say you cannot make this stuff up, but this is where we are.
Casey, good morning.
Let's start with what the endangerment finding is.
Sure.
And good morning.
Thanks, Pat, for having me.
I'm happy to be here on the show with you and Melissa.
So the Endangerment Finding came out of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling Massachusetts v. EPA that set the cornerstone for the Endangerment Finding to actually come out itself in 2009.
Basically, what it said is that EPA is legally required to regulate carbon dioxide and a mix of other greenhouse gases.
including things like methane, per flow of carbons, et cetera.
It's required to do so underneath the Clean Air Act.
It was a very clear decision.
It was a 5-4 decision.
We found that the definition of air pollutants to be unambiguous.
And at the time, this was during the Bush administration, EPA was kind of dodging the question on whether or not they should be actually regulating carbon dioxide in this mix of other greenhouse gas emissions.
Massachusetts along with several other states sued to get to this decision.
But in essence, the Supreme Court said that the EPA couldn't use policy preferences to avoid regulation, but it needs to be based on sound science and evidence, which it clearly is.
So that is what led to EPA actually
creating the Endangerment Finding in 2009.
And since then, it's been the backbone of several different EPA regulations with vehicle emissions, power plants, so on and so forth, and really is the most powerful tool, excuse me, for EPA and the government to be fighting climate change in a regulatory sense.
And so essentially, in rescinding this declaration, what they're saying is we rescind failed to recognize
Basic science am I am I pretty much getting that right?
Yeah.
Yeah, very much so and I would say it's even going further than that the New science nominees quotation marks there that EPA and Department of Energy and Lee Zeldin Are using is really pseudo science on sound And flies in the face of at this point decades of very sound science from hundreds thousands of scientists
in the US and across the globe.
Now, again, Zeldin said the proposal would erase limits on greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks on the nation's roads.
Melissa, again, as he said, the proposal would have finalized amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.
He was bragging about this while speaking at a truck dealership.
Melissa, let me turn it over to you for any questions to Casey Hicks from Wisconsin Conservation Voters.
Yeah, I mean, just, you know, the more we see about this, this, you know, just strikes me as something that is, you know, not about the next, you know, three and a half years of the Trump administration, but this is about, you know, them really, you know, undermining and essentially, you know,
invalidating any possibility for the EPA to do its work going forward, you know, for the next, you know, forever, right?
I mean, this seems like this is them trying to make this, you know, permanent, trying to make it as hard as possible for, you know, a new administration, a new Congress, anyone who recognizes science and wants to actually get back on the right path, it seems like
If they are successful here, it's going to make that a lot harder for a future administration, future Congress.
Is that your kind of assessment as well?
Or how hard was this to undo once this has been unleashed and done?
Yeah.
So I want to be clear that if the endangerment finding
It goes through this rulemaking process.
It's going to take several months to actually rescind it.
We're going to be going through a comment period up until about September 15th.
And there's going to be testimony that folks can take part in August 19th and 20th.
So there's time to make our voices heard on protecting this.
But yes, if it does go away, then
we're taking away the cornerstone to many other climate and greenhouse gas regulations that exist.
So part of this rollout for rescinding the endangerment finding was also taking back the 2024 emission standards that were just finished up last year.
And basically they're using the endangerment finding in their words, not being sound.
taking mental leaps to say that vehicle emission standards that were based on it that use it as its cornerstone are not possible and that they can't do them.
And so this is one part of a larger strategy that the Trump administration has been carrying out since the second term but arguably in their first term they tried to carry it out as well and thankfully there were roadblocks then.
But at this point
It's very clear that they want to remove the endangerment findings so that they can start picking away at these other climate laws and regulations and you're right Melissa really changed the landscape of laws and regulations having to do with protecting our public health and protecting ourselves from climate change going forward.
We are talking to Casey Hicks from Wisconsin Conservation Voters and the New York Times marks that this is a notable shift in the Trump administration's position that originally had simply downplayed the threat of global warming to one that now essentially flatly denies the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change.
The Times writes it would not only reverse current regulations, but if the move is upheld in court, it could make it significantly harder for future administrations to rein in climate pollution from the burning of coal, oil and gas.
Now we could wallow in this for hours and hours.
I'm going to try Casey to make this a glass half full thing or at least get your impression on it.
That there may be because of the ongoing advocacy for a cleaner climate that
even if the government is busy denying basic science, that there will still be an advocacy and a consumer push that will lead automakers to say, instead of saying, oh, there's no more rules we can race to the bottom, is to continue to embrace cleaner burning vehicles.
Is that still a possibility or is it your fear that a race to the bottom in terms of emissions is going to get started?
Do you think it's clear that
In many cases, industry is moving towards more efficient vehicles.
I don't know if you can quite say the same right now for power plants with the rise of AI and data centers that they, and with the loss of tax credits recently in the budget reconciliation bill that we're going to have as much progress in curbing climate change and investing in renewables and making vehicles.
more efficient, cleaner, without those tools, and especially without the endangerment finding.
But I think it is really important to stress right now that people's comments during this period talking about the endangerment finding and what it means for your daily lives is really important, both in the rulemaking process itself and when there's no doubt that there's going to be litigation that will come out once
this rule is possibly finalized if it is.
Our very first backstop is to have folks submit comments, show up to provide testimony at EPA hearings that I mentioned earlier on August 19th and 20th, and talk about how climate change is affecting them because it is affecting us right now.
We've all seen and experienced the last week in seeing
Just thick haze hanging in the air over all over the entire state of Wisconsin and much of the Midwest The last 10 years each year has been the hottest year on record and in Wisconsin We've also seen just worse and worse severe weather.
That's more frequent much more severe and so
Climate change is happening.
We're in the midst of it right now We're close to the tipping point, which is why it's so important to speak out to protect the endangerment finding And additionally I mentioned there's going to be inevitable litigation this goes through having people comment and have a public record that this is Something the public does not want to go away.
It's going to be important for any potential lawsuits that come forward too
And we're talking to Casey Hicks from Wisconsin Conservation Voters, along with Melissa Baldoff for this week's climate check.
So in closing that part of our discussion, Casey, what would you like folks to do?
Where can they go to learn more?
Yeah, folks can go to our website, conservationvoters.org.
They can sign up for email alerts and pretty soon we'll be sending out more information on how people can sign up for the comment period with EPA sign up to testify.
And we recommend that folks do so as soon as possible.
Anyone is allowed to testify.
The EPA asks people to pre-register by August 12th.
So we're recommending people registered by then.
And so if folks would like.
to get more info and learn how to sign up and have talking points and info to make the best testimony and comment possible.
go to our website conservationvoters.org and sign up for our email alerts.
I appreciate that very much and Casey you're about to learn why why Melissa has the most thankless job in Wisconsin radio right now is that I sometimes read other climate headlines to her and just simply ask her to react and not use any naughty words on the radio.
The headline from National Public Radio, why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose?
The Trump administration has asked NASA to drop plans to end at least two major satellite missions.
If the plans are carried out, one of the missions would be permanently terminated because the satellite would burn up in the atmosphere.
The data the two missions collect is widely used by scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health.
They are the only two federal satellite missions that were designed and built specifically to monitor planet warming greenhouse gases.
Melissa.
In in 20 seconds, what kind of a world that we live in where the president of the United States would rather lit a satellite burn up in orbit than get data on climate change?
Exactly.
So there you go.
And she did it without saying any naughty words whatsoever.
Melissa, thank you so much.
We'll talk to you next week.
Casey Hicks from Wisconsin Conservation Voters will wrap things up with a local break for some of you.
Others, James Kelly from Chippewa Falls.
After this, I'm Pat Krightlo.
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.
Brewer's taking on Atlanta, wrapping up that three game series this evening at 5.40 on several Civic Media stations, taking a
Five game winning streak into tonight's match and a four game lead over the Cubs in the National League Central Division.
Tomorrow we'll be talking to Lou Ann Bird about the recent town hall by Congressman Brian Stile.
We'll be talking to Sean O'Malley about your money in the markets, Chad Holmes, Joseph Pecky, Sharita Booker and more.
But right now we've got James Kelly from the Civic Media Newsroom here in the Chippewa Valley to tell us some of the things that he's working on for us.
James, how are you?
I'm great.
How you doing, Pat?
Very good.
It's nice to see you here.
And we're going to start with Governor Evers, who is not running for a third term, but certainly has a lot of time yet to serve as governor.
And he was in the Chippewa Valley recently talking about health care funding and more.
Yeah, he visited the Chippewa Valley Free Clinic yesterday down in Eau Claire, just kind of talking about the services that they offer.
kind of further support that they might like to see in the future given potential federal funding issues.
It's another one of those visits where, you know, this is a facility that doesn't deal with a lot of Medicaid Medicare patients, but more kind of that middle ground where people are working and they're making too much money to qualify for those programs, but still can't really afford their health care.
So they get a lot of grant funding, a lot of private donations, fundraising, and they get a lot of volunteer work from the community.
But
long term, you know, if they're not going to be able to have access to some of that grant funding from the federal government anymore, that's going to cause some funding issues for them here.
So he's talking about health care, but also I'm sure was asked about politics, not just state politics, but national politics, you know, the monkey business going on in Texas.
I'm sure he talked about that stuff too.
Yes, he did.
I actually asked him that question myself.
So he
gave a sort of surprising answer to me given that this is a very controversial topic for a state like Wisconsin where the legislature is Republican controlled but we have a Democratic governor this congressional redistricting isn't exactly something that is possible here but he did say he does think that these more solidly blue states like California and New York and even you know Rhode Island wherever these solid blue states in the northeast and the west they should be looking more towards doing this if Republicans in Texas are going to do it saying it's not a
long-term strategy that's going to be effective.
But in the short term, if it's a question between saving democracy and playing by the usual norms, it'll take saving democracy.
I mean, look, if you're on team democracy or team fascism, it shouldn't be that tough to pick a side here.
But getting back to health care here in the Chippewa Valley, and in fact, right here in Chippewa Falls, there will be a groundbreaking next week for a hospital that is designed to address the last year's abrupt closure of two hospitals around here.
Yeah, it feels almost like a psychological win as well, just to see some actual work being done to build a new hospital here in Chippewa Falls.
Obviously, St.
Joseph's will partially reopen well before this new Aspirus Health Hospital opens, but next week on Thursday, the Aspirus Health Hospital will have a groundbreaking ceremony where they will officially begin construction, which is slated to end in the fall of 2026.
That's just the first phase of construction, and they're also designing another way that's meant to be expanded upon in the future.
Yeah, if anybody's been on 29 coming past Chippewa Falls and the exit there for Chippewa Crossing and Seymour Cray Senior Boulevard where, you know, the festival and the culvers and the quick trip all went up recently, there'll be a hospital before too much longer, but they will start at the old St.
Joseph's Hospital in Chippewa Falls and people say, well, why don't they just stay there?
It's an empty hospital.
Why not just take that over?
And again, it's about retrofitting.
This is an older building and
So they're going to want their own building, but at least they're going to start someplace while they break ground for this new facility.
What is happening in Manominee about land that could be used for a data center?
Yeah, so this week the city of Menominee voted to approve annexing and rezoning a parcel of land from the town of Red Cedar.
That rezoning request was put in by a company called Balloonist LLC, which intends to build the data center on the land, which has area residents slightly concerned about the potential environmental effects and just overall health effects of having a data center that close to where they live.
Now, the city council says it's not a definite that a data center will go there.
They only voted to annex the land and rezone it.
that the process to get a data center going would probably take at least a couple years before construction would even start if they do end up pursuing that.
And I will say here, and I'm just speaking for myself, but the whole notion of data centers going up around Wisconsin, we were pretty early to this topic on this show, bringing up the concerns, the environmental concerns, which a lot of people don't think about.
But as we reminded people early on,
It's a lot of computers.
It's a lot of servers in these data centers, which means it'll heat up.
So what they look for for these data centers is a supply of natural water to cool these facilities.
Well, there's then questions of capacity.
How much water are you taking out of the lake, out of the ground, out of the river, whatever the case may be?
And is it, you know, are you putting it back as clean or cleaner than as you found it?
So.
Again, this is not to say that, that I'm not here to say data centers are universally bad or good.
But I want to know more about best practices.
You
know,
are other best practices lined up for water use for these data centers that would guide places like Menominee and Beaver Dam and all the other places where these are going up.
So again, I have no doubt, James, you will be following stories related to that.
Yeah.
And we've seen that in Tennessee,
too, with with where Twitter's grok AI is run out of.
They have very little pollution control in that facility, and it's not only polluting the ground, polluting the water, it's polluting the air itself.
just kind of giving off smog.
Why am I not surprised to hear this coming out of Tennessee?
Why am I not?
Last but not least, and this is in the Up North News daily newsletter as well, because everybody loves a happy ending.
It's not just a bear with a jar in its head.
It's a bear that no longer has a jar stuck on its head.
I've seen it referred to as Buckethead the Bear at this point.
Buckethead, Jughead, yep.
Yeah,
shockingly over a week with the jar on its head.
And as you can imagine, when it was finally found, it was significantly underweight, but it was able to drink some water.
So wildlife officials came out, they sedated the bear, got the jar off its head and released it into an area with a lot of natural food and water, but they made sure to credit local residents because the constant videos and pictures being taken of the bear walking around with the jar on its head, very good for helping to find it.
Very good indeed.
James Kelly in Chippewa Falls.
Thank you, James.
Appreciate it.
Thanks.
All right.
Have a great day.
Thanks to all of you for joining us as well.
I'm Pat Krightlow, the founding editor for Up North News.
Up North News is the Wisconsin outlet for Courier, a pro-democracy news network.
Enjoy the rest of your Wednesday.
We'll see you back here tomorrow morning, 6 a.m.
Here, Up North.
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