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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.
Happy Friday.
It is August 8th, 2025, 706.
Nice to have you here back up north as we head into it.
weekend here on these mornings powered by UpGurrent News on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel is standing by.
We're going to come to him a little early to talk about a federal court decision this week about the dispute over road access on the Lactoflambo Reservation.
by non-tribal members who own property within the reservations boundaries and I'll compare my interpretation of it to Jim's.
One of us went to law school, the other just yodels on the radio, but we'll see what we say about that and then Jim will be back.
with Jennifer Scholesi and Mark Jacob as we do more of our Week in Review, some of the headlines of the week.
That's all coming up.
Dr. Kristen Lirely in our next hour and of course we'll have sports as well with Mike Clemens, but first it is time for the forecast heading into the weekend.
Parker Olson is here from Madison Studio A2 as we welcome in meteorologist Brittany Merleau where I thought, well, maybe for a short period here,
We could open up the windows because it's going to be really hot later today.
Can we open them up for a bit?
No, no, we can't.
The humidity is still, uh, no bueno, shall
we
say.
Yeah.
It is
sticky.
Uh, and we got that.
So I imagine the thunder can't be far behind.
No, it's not.
We've got a lot going on here as we head into the weekend.
So pay attention if you had any outdoor plans because you're going to want to listen up.
So temperatures right now, 63 degrees is the coolest up in Eagle River is about 73 degrees in the big cities, Milwaukee, Madison area.
We've got some fog far north and east by the Great Lakes.
We've got a low pressure system right now building in North Dakota.
It's already dragged the warm front, right?
We felt that yesterday.
A lot of us did reach those low nineties.
and it's going to be very sunny today and still humid, very humid.
Dew points in the mid 60s to low 70s.
Heat advisories out already for Green Bay, Oshkosh, Shawno area up in those woods.
Ashland, Hayward, even over to Siren as well.
You're going to see some of the warmest temperatures in the state.
Low 90s will be creeping in and the humidity paired with that means it's going to be feeling more like 100 degrees.
Yesterday, our heat index felt about the mid-90s or so.
So this is going to get even warmer as we head into this afternoon.
And you know, with that low pressure system just sitting out there in the batter's box, it's headed here towards us.
So what we're going to see is storms starting this afternoon, probably around three o'clock, right towards Superior Hayward into the Ashland area, where you're actually in a slight risk for them to be strong to severe.
Biggest threats are going to be some high damaging wind gusts, hail, and also some heavy downpours.
A quick one to two inches is possible.
So we're looking at first round this afternoon, then another round up there, still far north overnight, probably around 3 a.m.
I could linger into the morning, and then this front is going to start to shift south.
It is going to be headed towards the La Crosse, Wausau area by tomorrow morning, probably around 9 a.m.
And it is going to be hitting hard.
We are in a slight risk.
The whole central Wisconsin area from La Crosse to Wausau to Green Bay, down to Sheboygan and over to Madison.
This is tomorrow afternoon.
Those high damaging winds, also some heavy heavy rain and hail is possible as we go through the morning.
They should start to ease up a little bit at night, but more and more rounds start to come through because this front wants to stall.
Yep, park itself right over southeastern Wisconsin where we could see rounds of rain, heavy heavy rain at times.
all the way through Tuesday.
So this could start Saturday, tomorrow afternoon, all the way through Tuesday potentially.
So we're definitely looking at a flooding risk in the south and eastern parts of the state where totals could get up to four, five inches by the time this kicks all out of here.
So as we go into the weekend, be careful out there.
A lot of things going on.
The temperatures still do stay warm and muggy, even as we go into the weekend and into next week, we're still looking at low to mid 80s.
It's still going to be feeling close to near 90 degrees.
So very summery conditions.
And of course, stormy.
So stay weather savvy.
And of course, if you want to get your mowing done, if you're going to get that lawn done today would be it.
Doesn't matter
if it's
hot or not.
Just get it done, which takes us to Robin Tigerton, who says good morning sunshine with light fog 66 degrees.
The corn sweat is in full effect.
He says yesterday I got four yards mode in Tigerton, two yards in the rural areas today, and we'll get it done early before it gets hot.
He says, I can then sit back and watch the Packers game tomorrow night for the football preseason.
And notes that, you know, it is football preseason where you go from extreme heat to extreme cold from tornadoes to blizzards all between the preseason and the Super Bowl.
And channeling his inner Greg and Brittany says, yeah, I'm drinking lots of water and Gatorade.
And
he also says, yeah, we do need rain just not all at once.
And Tony, Tony asking Brittany, what are you doing to Ashland?
I don't know.
Are you doing something to Ashland or is it
just
the weather that you're sending
to
Ashland?
It's just the weather that I'm actually, it's not going to be too, too bad in Ashland.
I mean, today is the worst day of it all.
And then honestly, the rest of the weekend, you're looking dry.
That's one of the best places to be all weekend.
It's always good to be way up north.
Right.
Couldn't agree more.
Thank you, Brittany.
Talk to you a little bit later.
All right.
Hey, sign up for our daily newsletter, UpNorthNewsWI.com.
There's an article in there today about the Wisconsin State Fair being one of the best state fairs in the country in a new USA Today ranking.
So there's that.
There's one about different types of hiking trails in Wisconsin for whatever type of hiker you are, wherever you are on the scale.
There's a place that's there for you.
And there's an article about the dangers to rural health care in Wisconsin and how it's a double whammy with the lack of affordable housing stock in rural Wisconsin.
So all of that through our newsletter at upnorthnewswi.com.
Also on the website right now, you can see a story that I just posted there that features a video clip that
we were able to run before anybody else.
It went up this morning and it's all about real healthcare facing a death spiral in the words of former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg in an interview with a doctor from Tomah talking to Dr. Jill McMullen, a family practice doc there.
about what the Medicaid cuts that were supported by Congressman Derek Van Orden will mean to people in rural Wisconsin, especially the third congressional district.
So head over to our Instagram and look at an excerpt from the interview or read all about it.
On our website upnorthnewswi.com Put in your email address sign up for our Sunday morning newsletter as well Which will be featuring that and a lot of the other political headlines you might have missed of the past week one of those just might include a Court decision that was handed down this week by a federal judge who
basically ruled against the Lactoflambo tribe in its years-long fight to be allowed to block road access to properties inside the reservation now owned by non-tribal members.
Essentially, the reservation land, like many others around the country, resembles a checkerboard because for a time in the late 19th and early 20th century, the U.S.
government
Monkeying around with tribal territory saying that instead of belonging to a tribe as a whole, it had to be cut up into parcels and that if any individual tribal members decided to sell their parcel to a non-Indian, well, it was no longer tribal land.
So in the Lactoflambo reservation, you have dozens of parcels that belong to non-Indians, but to get to their properties, they have to cross tribal land, of course.
Well, when developers built roads to some of those houses in the 1960s, they received tribal permission for the roads known as easements.
In most cases, the easements were not timeless.
They had expiration dates.
And now that the easement permissions have expired after, you know, so many years, the tribe wanted to negotiate new easements that came with payments to continue having that permission to cross tribal lands.
Negotiations broke down with the adjoining non-tribal town of Lactoflambo and the tribe put up barricades two and a half years ago for a few weeks.
Eventually a temporary deal had the town making payments to the tribe and the barricades came down.
Now finally the court case has been decided and federal judge William Conley put out a 47 page ruling that said in so many words
Those easements don't really mean anything anymore.
Once those roads were built and became public roads, non-tribal members get to use them to go to their properties.
Now, this is just my valuation after reading through the decision.
It just seems like another of many cases where Indigenous people were told one thing, and then the fine print came back to bite them later on.
A statement by the tribe says in part this decision overlooks key elements of federal law that protect tribal lands and the tribe's inherent sovereign authority to control access to its reservation.
Is that it?
Probably not.
The case has been watched all over as a candidate for the U.S.
Supreme Court since this ruling could have impacts on easements for tribal lands nationwide.
So maybe there are still enforceable easements.
Maybe they're just a mirage, able to be cast aside in the time it takes for a judge to bang their gavel.
So what do you think?
Am I, when I say it's easements, schmesements, it's that about right?
Or is this something that is just a gross mischaracterization of the opinion?
If only we had a good attorney to talk to.
Here's a good attorney now, former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel, who joins us a bit early for a weekend review and has had to listen to amateur hour from somebody who did not attend law school but has read a few court decisions in his day.
Jim Santel, good morning.
Give me your grade, Professor Santel, if I were one of your law school students.
historical precedent for all of this, and now the result issued by, again, his name is Judge William Connolly.
He is a long-standing judge, a federal judge located in Madison, which is the Western District, and therefore there is jurisdiction with respect to these tribal cases.
And in the end, he finds, as you accurately noted, that in the United States, again, interesting, the United States here, as we often did in the past, supported tribal rights.
And so we come down on the side of the tribe here, neither tribe nor the United States.
He says, have attempted to impose reasonable restrictions on the homeowners access to these properties.
In other words, he's talking also and raising the option, perhaps, that if more reasonable this, there may be some options here still.
He says, instead, to date, the tribe has attempted to block access altogether.
and demanded that the town pay an exorbitant monthly fee to keep those roads open or a one-time $20 million fee for permanent access.
Accordingly, the court concludes the town and the homeowners have an implied easement and implied easement to use and access of the roads to reach their properties.
Again, 47 pages, an awful lot of legality there along the way.
We're also talking about something called the Indian Right of Way Act.
And a lot of this has to do with the interpretation of that.
I think you step back as you are doing this morning, Pat, appropriately.
And no number one that this is one of those situations.
A 47 page opinion certainly reflects that there are reasonable arguments to be made here, right in the opposite direction.
And he wrestles with those.
He comes down on the side of the homeowners and not on the side of the United States, most importantly, not on the side of the tribe.
the larger issue is just this matter of sovereignty.
Right.
And that's what we go to.
And I'm not finding fault with the judge necessarily.
I'm just saying the nature of the law, the way that he interpreted
certainly does have that, shall we say, bias toward locking in place the checkerboard situation that was put in place by the Dawes Act and by the treaty that the Lactoflambo signed back in something like 1854.
All right, Jim, we'll be back to talk with our weekend review panel.
A local break is next for some of you, but first, really quickly, it is Free Ticket Friday, and if you're looking for tickets to the Brewer's Game next Wednesday afternoon with the Pittsburgh Pirates, well, text us the word ground, G-R-O-U-N-D, ground, and you can be part of a statewide drawing for tickets as part of Free Ticket Friday.
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Well, let's tell you again, it's Free Ticket Friday, so four tickets to see the Brewers versus the Pirates next Wednesday afternoon.
You've got to be able to receive electronic tickets on your phone and use them, and if you can go to the game next Wednesday afternoon, go to the Civic Media app, go to one of the stations where you can hear the show text us the word Ground, G-R-O-U-N-D, before nine o'clock, there will be different keywords on different shows throughout the course of the day, and then one statewide entry, chosen at random, we'll get those tickets
to the Brewers game.
So that's all part of Free Ticket Friday.
The Brewers themselves off yesterday, and they start a series against the New York Mets this evening.
You can hear the pregame at 6.35 tonight on several civic media stations across Wisconsin.
Head to the civicmedia.us website to learn more.
Jim Santel, former U.S.
attorney, has been with us along with journalist Jennifer Sholesy and Mark Jacob joining us for a little weekend review action today.
Mark, Jennifer, good morning.
How are you
Okay.
All right, let's see.
Jennifer, let's start with you.
The last edition I saw of your substack, a CBS investigative piece on the Epstein jail video broke important new ground under its new mega mandate.
That story might never be allowed.
That's part of indistinct chatter, her newsletter on substack.
And again,
There's always a million things going on here, Jennifer, but I know that the decision on who's going to run CBS News after this Paramount merger with Skydance is an open and concerning question about whether CBS News will actually be a credible news network going forward.
I think it probably will be a slow change.
In some respects, very sudden in others, the Skydance merger was approved and finalized this week.
Nothing happened at CBS News last night, as far as I know.
But we know they've already committed to having a minder in the newsroom to check for bias, which to my reading means anti-Trump sentiment of any kind.
They've already said they're going to go back to fundamentals and
objective journalism.
So I took a look at a story the CBS did in the last 10 days about the Epstein video that is an excellent example of rock solid journalism.
From start to finish it is an incredible piece.
I encourage everybody to look at it because that is journalism.
If I was still teaching journalism I would be showing it to my students on my first day of class and saying this is what you aspire to.
This is the kind of story I think we will not be seeing in 60 Minutes or on CBS News in the future.
and it just makes it very tough overall, Mark, to engage in news, which is why I stopped the presses.news.
You've got a newsletter titled, Will Journalism Become Impossible in the US?
Trump's War on the Free Press Follows Foreign Dictators Playbook.
To the point where, I mean, this is Kim Jong-il stuff.
He's holding up charts yesterday saying, oh, here are the new figures on employment.
Yeah, we don't know.
We don't know what he's making up and putting in charts in front of us anymore.
And yet some newsrooms are going to put that out as if, you know, they're just going to say, Trump says, dot, dot, dot.
And I mean, that's Banana Republic stuff right there, Mark.
I mean, and so he fires the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he doesn't like the numbers, which, you know, have are being.
produced to the same way they've always been produced and he praised the numbers in the past.
He just doesn't like these numbers because it's showing that he's tanking the economy.
And so this is dictator stuff.
And what I was writing about this week was
how a lot of what you're seeing from Trump is not like some creative new idea he's had.
It's dictator playbook stuff.
It's getting, you know, and what Jennifer is talking about fits right in, which is getting your pals to buy big media and turn them into, you know, into kind of a spoke people for your political views.
And, and that's what, you know, Victor Orban did in Hungary.
you know, and and he's just crushing independent media.
And there's just so much that he's doing now that fits in with what dictators do when they're trying to take over a country,
which includes, you know,
trampling on due process, Jim Santel, and doing things like building concentration camps.
One of them being referred to as Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, but there's been a legal update on that.
Again, provided the Trump administration abides by what the court said.
You've got Judge Kathleen Williams.
Is her name?
We should identify these folks and talk about them and herald their work when they do these important things, issuing a temporary restraining order from the bench saying that the government cannot install any more lighting and paving and fencing and other fixtures at the detention center because there could be serious harm.
to the wetlands and endangered species.
They're interestingly not so much because we haven't seen what happens there yet to human beings, but the impact upon doing this is also having effects upon environment in violation of federal law.
Again, another fascinating approach by a federal judge, and she has ordered it stopped.
The question is, has the government undeniably will take this up to the 11th Circuit and then maybe to the Supreme Court,
What does the government do, the administration do, the Department of Justice do?
In the meantime, will this be one of these cases where once again they say, you know what?
Does a federal judge have power here?
A federal judge who?
And the answer may well be no.
And we have seen that repeatedly across this nation.
That is the very constitutional crisis that we have been, by my mark, since March 15th of this year.
It continues unabated.
All right, that's part of our Week in Review panel, and that conversation is going to continue in just a moment here.
First, a couple of other updates coming across the Civic Media radio network later on.
Well, of course, there's Matt Nair on air, which follows this fine program from 9 to 11.
And at 9.35, Jane and Greg will be talking to Casey Hicks from Wisconsin Conservation Voters.
And then just after 10 a.m., State Representative Jenna Jacobson talking about her run for the state Senate.
She's
one of what may be multiple candidates running for that state Senate seat against incumbent Howard Markline, one of the co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee.
Again, it's Free Ticket Friday, and if you want to be in the running for those free tickets, get to the Civic Media app and text us the word ground before nine o'clock, G-R-O-U-N-D, and be in the running for those tickets.
Many of you will hear the Midwest Farm Report coming up next, and then more with our Week in Review panel live from Lake Wasota on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Hey, you can follow me on social media.
Head over to facebook.com slash mornings with Pat Krightlow.
And not only can you see the show live there as we stream it on Facebook, but we also had an occasional post about things that are in the news or maybe discussions that you missed earlier.
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Trigvie has worked with fledgling democracies around the world and now he's trying to save democracy here in the United States.
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So again, head over to Facebook and look for mornings with Pat Crightlow.
Our Week in Review panel is here.
Jennifer Sholesy, Mark Jacob and former US Attorney Jim Santel all with us on this Friday morning.
Just another day in Trump's America.
where just when you were done hearing about troops being sent to Los Angeles for no particular good reason, Jennifer, it appears the troops need somewhere else to go.
So Washington DC is going to be the next blue city of under Trump occupation is the way it seems to look here.
One of the top doge.
workers, one of those almost teenagers, claims he was mugged in Washington D.C.
earlier this week.
Elon Musk posted about it on social media.
Trump got into it and suddenly the right wing was a gog at crime in D.C., which is actually at a 30-year low.
Last night
Trump announced that he was sending federal troops into Washington as early as today to patrol tourist venues and the like.
I think it's obviously just a show of force and one possible event is not a reason to turn a city into an armed fortress.
But there we are.
Oh, but but but it is ample reason, Mark Jacob.
I mean, you only need the the one thing there.
And I think where I want to go with this is how this is reported, because, you know, in the Wisconsin version of it, you had 20 lawmakers, 20 legislators, sending a letter to the mayor of Milwaukee, saying you need to do something about crime in your city, because there have recently been one high profile shooting.
And, you know, what's the mayor supposed to do other than say, crime is down?
in our city and it really it's incumbent upon newsrooms to put some perspective on on a letter like that when legislators are playing the quote-unquote Milwaukee card.
Yeah, I mean it's really important for people to understand that crime is dramatically down in the United States over the last 30 years.
It's way lower than it was in the 1990s.
This is a good news story.
This is policies and people doing good things so that crime is down.
But the interesting thing, Pat, was that when they did a public opinion surveys over the last 30 years, almost always people would say crime is up.
But the statistics show it's way down.
So it's one of those things where it's really easy for people to get false impressions.
And then you have people like Fox News and other kind of propaganda services.
demagoguing the issue so that they don't want to get to the truth.
They just want to, you know, use excuses to try to increase government power.
And again, here I am talking about the Republicans who always were talking about government being on our necks wanting to increase government power because that's what's going on right now.
Well, yeah, I mean, in every way shape or form, whether it's, you know,
sending the military into a city or, as we discussed last hour, having the Corps of Engineers raise a river level so that JD Vance can go kayaking on it.
I mean, you know, small government only for thee, but not for me.
And Mark, you remind me, I don't have it in front of me here, but I mean, one of the
the most telling graphics of the 2024 election was when respondents were asked like six different questions, five or six questions, like that is crime down or up, you know, is immigration down or up.
And consistently, the people who answered all of them wrong, who got wrong, these are factual questions.
There's a correct yes or no.
And the ones who went 0 for 6 overwhelmingly voted for Trump because
Jennifer, that's the narrative that they get from their choice in quote-unquote news.
If you watch Fox News, oh gosh, I had promised myself I would never call it Fox News.
I would call it Fox Cable.
Fox Cable, if you watch that, you do not know what's going on.
Right now, you think the biggest story in the world is the Sidney Sweeney Jeans ad, and you think that crime is up, prices are down.
Trump is great, and it's really done a terrible disservice to this country to just share so many lies so frequently with so many people.
Well, and it's funny, they loved the tabloid story of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
They loved it and loved it until Trump went about face on it.
and suddenly they're pretending the story never existed.
Meanwhile, you know, in traditional media, you're seeing Jim Santel, you're seeing Elaine Maxwell being transferred to a lower security prison, which, near as I can see, is amazingly unprecedented for somebody who doesn't seem to have done anything to deserve that, given the horrific things she did to children.
This is a violent crime and again I call upon everyone including the media to reinforce that notion This is yes, it's about sex, but it's about power and it's about violence the human trafficking the sex trafficking in which she and very likely very likely the principal defendant who did commit suicide in prison here They engaged in violent crime
So what is the consequence of that?
Inside the Bureau of Prisons, it is an entity of the U.S.
Department of Justice, where once again, people who know what they're doing up until now have had the capacity to make assessments of incoming convicts, incoming defendants, and make a determination about the security level of the facility to which they should be assigned.
She is high violence, high security,
defended and she should remain there in Tallahassee.
Instead, leapfrogging over all sorts of internal, I know it sounds wonky, but regulations that are there for a reason to protect the American public and also frankly to protect the very lives and livelihood of the people who are in those prisons, she is sent over to Texas at what is again euphemistically called a camp.
where, again, there are low gates and things around the perimeter.
And it is unjustifiable in terms of not only the standards of the precedent.
If I were a criminal offense attorney in America today, and I was representing a violent criminal,
in that category, and that person was going off to a high security prison.
I would file a motion with the federal district court judge, wherever that is, and say, obviously, the Bureau of Prisons has changed its standards.
I want the same deal.
And that's also the impact of this beyond just this inappropriate, indefensible designation.
Mark should I be half empty or half full my glass on on the Epstein case in terms of the impact on Trump because when he when he flipped and suddenly it became a hoax and we learned that his name had come up in some fashion in the files Once again like so many other times it feels like just when he's going to face accountability the American attention span moves and Speaker Mike Johnson sent Congress home early on their recess and so here's the half empty half full has
Trump again, you know, slipped accountability for whatever misdeeds he created, or did he simply put a pin in it and when Congress comes back, those members of Congress are going to be as vocal as ever about releasing all of the files and we'll be hearing about this all over again.
You know, I mean, he's gotten away with so much horrible conduct.
But this one seems that for some reason, and I'm not sure exactly why, but for some reason it seems to be sticking.
I mean, it's been a month, right?
Since the latest thing where Pam Bondi announced that it was all sitting on her desk and she was just going to review it and release it.
And then they decided, well, no, there are actually no, there's no Epstein list.
We're going to have to
You know, we're not going to release anything more, which is, I mean, and that outraged the right as well as the, you know, the left and just all decent people who don't want, you know, children molested.
And then it'd be to be covered up by our government.
You know, so I think it's sticking.
I mean, and there's there are ways we can help it continue to stick as a tough issue.
I mean, I don't even call it the recess anymore.
I call it the Epstein recess.
This is Congress on an Epstein recess.
And, you know, because they fled town.
to avoid voting on whether to release records that may show that powerful people were involved in child sex trafficking.
That's what's going on and decent people don't do that.
Mike Johnson does it because he's not a decent person.
So we look at this recess Jennifer and how it gets covered and
On the one hand, you could see that it's going to be one of the busiest recesses ever as, you know, when there's the occasional town hall, like Flood in Nebraska, like Style in Wisconsin, and as more people learn what's in, you know, the Trump mega bill, they want to speak up.
They don't like it.
As more people kind of see through the noise on the Epstein files, they don't like it.
And yet,
I know because I've already seen this.
If a member of Congress comes home for recess and tours of farm, the coverage is all about the congressman who came home and did a farm tour.
So if you were running a newsroom in one of these districts and it's the August recess, how do you make sure that your coverage is relevant to the country's priorities and the viewers' values?
rural districts when the congressperson came home and we were very excited when we got invited to go to a farm tour or a press conference because it was something out of the ordinary and it seemed really important.
And I don't want to disparage in any way any local journalists anywhere right now because I think most of them are doing a hell of a job.
But I will say there's enormous pressure for younger inexperienced journalists
who get a chance to interview a congressperson.
Oh my gosh.
And to call them out, to ask them hard questions is not something that if you haven't done it before and it's your first job and you're 21 years old, I think it's hard.
I know it was hard for me.
I got an opportunity to do one of those with the then vice president of the United States
and
So I think it's hard.
That said,
A lot of these folks, because these town halls, and some of these things are so contentious, there's a lot more experienced reporters, and I do think experience matters in this case, where they, you know what, just ask the darn question.
But you're right, that's what politicians do.
they know that they're gonna walk through a farm field with a friendly crowd and they're doing it intentionally that way so that they get the pretty pictures and no hard questions.
And if they get the hard questions, I know you put up one recently with Congresswoman Nancy Mace, but we've certainly seen it with Derek Van Orden.
If they don't like the question, Jennifer, well, now they just have this angry outburst at the person, which used to kill your reputation, but now it furnishes your reputation.
if you yell at a local reporter?
like,
yeah, get them because Trump has convinced you and Fox has helped that the press is the bad, they're the bad guys.
But what we're seeing, especially in a lot of these recent town halls, but think back to the town halls, you know, and before that, regular people who aren't in the Fox bubble, they kind of get it.
And so when they see Nancy Mace as she did yesterday, go after that reporter for saying, how can you say you're for this when you voted against it?
How can you take credit for it?
And Nancy Mace starts just railing on her.
If you're not in the Fox bubble, I think you see that and you're like, ugh.
Exactly.
Jennifer Scholesi and Mark Jacob and Jim Santel, our Week in Review panel with us.
And again, for free, Ticket Friday, the word is ground, G-R-O-U-N-D.
Text that through the Civic Media app.
A local update is next for some of you folks here on the Civic Media radio network.
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Coming up in just about 15 minutes here, Bill Berrien, candidate for Wisconsin Governor.
Should he just stop talking to reporters because it seems like every time he talks to one he Steps in it yet again, and he did with Dan Bice and trying to answer the question
the first time, second time, third time, the fourth time about his support of Nikki Haley rather than Donald Trump in the last GOP Republican presidential primary.
We're going to talk to Dr. Kristen Lierly.
We're going to have Mike Clemens with sports.
That's all coming up in our eight o'clock hour, but first of a few more minutes here with Jennifer Sholesy, Mark Jacob, and former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel.
And let's get into the
the map mischief, the corrupt cartography going on in Texas where legislators have left the state to deny Republicans the quorum where they can pass those corrupt maps.
Jennifer, it's no great mystery that there's somewhere in your neck of the woods there in Chicagoland.
Do you want to give us an overview of what the reporting has been like about what's happening in Texas so far?
at a
And and they have regular press availability and they're doing just constant interviews with network and local TV.
And so they're
We know where they are.
And so when you hear John Cornyn say, I asked the FBI to go find them, let's remember that John Cornyn is in a very competitive primary race in Texas against Attorney General Ken Paxton.
So he's just trying to get some attention.
The other group is in New York, and I believe some of the Texas legislators are also in California.
We know where they are.
This FBI stuff is just performance art.
A lot of it is, and yet when Democrats are accused of being performative in this, I think it's important to take that step back and say, why is this action being taken?
And it's because of a legitimate problem with an illegitimate policy that's trying to be forced through.
To what degree do you think that coverage has come all the way back to focus on the root cause, the corrupt maps, versus the surface coverage of legislators on the run?
I think this has actually been really good for educating people about what gerrymandering is, because it's kind of complicated.
You know, you would think, well, you know, if you've got like 55% of the vote, the other party has 45% then the...
legislature and the Congress will be apportioned that way.
And they don't understand that you could draw maps to where even if you're in the minority, you get most of the or almost all of the seats in Congress.
Well, I don't need to explain that to people in Wisconsin because they've seen it for many years.
But a lot of people don't understand this at all.
And and not only do you have this situation in Texas where where they
They're constantly trying to steal voting rights from people.
They're harassing Harris County.
They don't like people in Houston voting because they don't vote the way they like to vote.
play all these tricks with drop boxes and stuff like that, the Texas Republicans have been constantly trying to subvert democracy in their state.
Their state is farther along in this march toward autocracy than almost any other.
Texas and Florida are examples of what the whole country is going to be like if we don't do something about this.
But just to quickly answer your question,
This is actually good for making people understand how bad gerrymandering is and how we need an overall solution.
This kind of state-by-state solution is not going to cut it for the reasons that are obvious now.
Jim Santel, you've got a weekend show, Amicus Law Review, 9 o'clock Saturdays across the Civic Media Radio Network.
And so we've certainly got into some some things I'm sure you'll be covering.
But as well, this whole notion that now that the the Department of Justice is a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Incorporated, what is that doing to the reputation of Department of Justice attorneys as they continue on with all these many court cases?
You go into a judge, you get a search warrant, even presenting a complaint, other things like that.
There would not be complete deference, but the judge.
would look at me and say, Mr. Santel, again, give me an honest answer to this situation.
And my ethics and my integrity and the very core of the Department of Justice would say to me, I need to be a straight shooter with this judge.
I will tell her, I will tell him the truth.
And that's called a certain amount of professional deference to the Department of Justice and its reliability.
That has all but been released in recent times.
And now, more and more instances of federal district court judges when the government, assistant US attorneys, litigation folks from main justice go before them, they no longer are entitled to no longer get that sort of low level of deference.
Just the opposite.
It is a cross examination.
It's a question.
We're going to talk more about the diminution, the near destruction of that reputation, and the fact that federal district court judges no longer can rely upon the very things that your attorneys say to them in court.
And if you want to follow up on what Mark Jacob is doing, well, you can also check out the Akilah Hughes video series for Courier Newsroom.
How is this better?
All about Trump's media takeover and why Americans are increasingly split into the informed and the manipulated.
Mark, it's you and Courier's founder, Tara McGowan, talking.
Yeah, yeah, this is and you can find it if you go to if you google courier newsroom We you know and you and you you'll find you can find your way to Akilah's Podcast and it's it's great because she what I really like about it when she interviewed me and then they cut the video the very first word is me yelling facts, you know Because I'm like desperately wanting facts to actually be protected in this country and and the fact that
I mean, they really are creating, the right wing is creating an earth too.
You know, I mean, they're creating a kind of a false, a bizarre, false fantasy world in which facts don't matter and they can just make stuff up and that stupid stuff in the White House with the charts and graphs yesterday was a great example of that.
Yep.
And also get his newsletter, stopthepresses.news and Jennifer Scholes, these indistinct chatter can be found on Substack as well.
Thanks to all of you again.
Have a great start to your weekend.
Thank you.
Bye.
Appreciate it so much.
Hey, coming up next, we'll talk to Dr. Kristen Lyrely.
We'll do some sports with Mike Clemens and a reminder, if you still haven't entered our free ticket Friday, you can win tickets to the Brewer's Game next Wednesday afternoon against Pittsburgh.
All you got to do is head to that Civic Media app, use the text feature and text us the word ground, G-R-O-U-N-D.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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