Gym Teacher, English Teacher Announce Engagement (Hour 1)

Live, across Wisconsin on Civic Media, you're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.

Now, from our Lake WSOTA studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.

Well, hey there, Wisconsin.

Good morning.

It is 606 on this Wednesday morning, August 27 2025.

Another beautiful morning to have you here up North line from Lake Wissota from wherever you're spending your mornings listening across the civic media radio network or watching us on social media, catching us by app.

However, you got here.

Nice to have you along.

I've got a question for you.

Can the work week be done already?

There is just something about

when a holiday weekend is coming up, like Labor Day weekend or, you know, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Parker Olson, we get to Wednesday and go, uh, can we just go?

Can we just be done now?

I'm ready.

It's really funny you say that because this morning I was putting out my shoes and I thought to myself, Oh, on Friday, I can sleep in because we're doing.

Not

that stuff.

Yeah, I will be again with the daughters in town will be, you know, that'll be the one day I take, you know, just for us to do some fun stuff together.

And so yeah, I mean, our live work week only has one more day after today.

But I could go now.

I mean, oh, yes, you know yesterday was as much as I complained about Sunday being gross Yesterday was the polar opposite without without the polar without the polar Vortex or the Arctic Express or whatever it was I was trying to say the other day.

It was gorgeous.

Yeah, I actually I actually stopped work for a time yesterday afternoon and Went out to my hammock

Wow, I'm out there.

Well, in part because you know, the grandsons were out there and my daughter and I wanted to spend a little bit of time with them.

I can't just be working here the whole time.

But still, I mean, it was just perfect out there.

The day made even brighter by the the Brewers winning last night and Roger notes on Facebook.

The Cubs lost to the Giants out West five to two overnight.

So the Brewers magic number is now 24.

Oh, I like that.

I like that.

That's really low.

Yep.

So it was, it was a great day yesterday.

We'll get Brittany Merlo's forecast about what else to expect for today and heading into the Labor Day weekend in just a bit.

Coming up, it would be enough for leaders from education, health care, labor, local services, for all those groups to call attention to the damage being done

by the Trump administration on their own.

But imagine if you get them all together singing from the same hymnal.

Well, that's going to happen today in Eau Claire.

And it will include the national president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randy Weingarten, talking about the important work to educate the public about the ways that we will all be impacted by Trump's actions for many years to come.

Randy Weingarten is on a plane now heading to Eau Claire and I talked to her about an hour ago before she hopped on her flight and we will play that interview during the show today.

Also Wisconsin is the scene of a new lawsuit that is taking a familiar new approach to the impacts of a changing climate and that would be the harm to children.

We'll talk to Melissa Baldoff about these youth-centric lawsuits, what I guess you could call the literal cry of the next generation that wants all the rest of us to stop harming their future environment and health and maybe hand them a planet they can live in.

We will, of course, talk about the closest thing the United States will get to a royal wedding.

That would be Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey announcing plans to get married and whether the veteran football player and the billionaire pop star can make time for wedding planning between his new NFL season and her new album release.

Brittany's state forecast for today says it's going to be breezy today with a mix of clouds and sun, or high today in the low to mid 70s, a West Southwest wind at 10, sometimes 20 miles an hour.

She says showers are likely tonight.

uh through all parts of wisconsin maybe a thunderstorm even lows tonight in the mid to upper fifties a southwest wind at five to ten miles an hour hey along the way if you would like to like roger just did in stevens point uh you can give us your questions and your comments in several difficult several different ways you can use the civic media app

You can then bring up one of the stations where you're hearing the program and you can either use the text button or the voice note button and leave us a little audio note with your question or comment.

And of course, we're on Facebook and YouTube.

That would be the Up North News Facebook and YouTube pages and the Civic Media Facebook and YouTube pages.

And you can follow what my team is doing over at UpNorthNewsWI.com as well as for the brewers and mentioning that they won last night.

Yes, for the second straight game, the Milwaukee Brewers jumped off to a six nothing lead and still managed to make it a nail biter both times.

But thankfully they won both times.

And last night, the hero was Isaac Collins, hitting a sack fly with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth to bring home the winning run nine to eight.

William Contreras hit a two run homer, Bryce Terrang hit a two run homer.

A lot of excitement, and again, had to have a little drama in there as well.

Game 3 of the series is also at 6.05 this evening on several civic media stations around the state.

And then tomorrow's game, the fourth and final game of the series, of course, on a getaway day, it is a 12.35 start time for the pregame here across the Civic Media radio network.

But if we're really going to talk sports, Parker Olson, we have to bypass the Brewers and the Packers.

We have to go right to the Kansas City Chiefs and whether their season has been detrimentally impacted by having a guy on their team who is a veteran player, but now is clearly distracted because he's got a wedding to plan.

And if there's one thing we know about guys,

is that we're always very distracted when it comes time to planning a wedding.

I mean, we, we, we sweat all the details and I'm not quite sure how Travis Kelsey is going to pull this one off, but I wish him the best.

Yeah,

I do too.

You know, I want to read you a text that I got from a friend of mine, the commissioner of my fantasy football league.

Oh, the commissioner.

Well,

by all means,

continue.

Important words.

Yes.

Travis Kelsey just went down to my draft board now that he has a wedding to plan.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

The people are

talking and it's a big deal.

This is going to be Travis Kelsey's worst season ever.

This this is or his best,

you know,

because again, Taylor magic, you know, it could be or he could really screw up and get injured.

Don't get hurt, buddy.

Don't don't say that.

Why would you say that?

Well, don't break a leg.

Break a leg.

No, the guy.

The guy is funny.

Okay.

First off, he's got that podcast along with his brother, Jason.

Yeah.

And I've also seen clips where he's mic'd up like a training camp.

Sure.

And I mean, you talked about loose.

How much more loose could a guy be?

You know, you're marrying the one of the world's most famous celebrities who happens to be a billionaire.

Life is good, you know, and she seems cool.

She's not

one of those billionaires that I'm like, ugh, she's actually like, okay.

I have to say that, yes, I mean, obviously, opinions on people can change, especially as they change as well.

And I did listen to the full two hours of the podcast that the Kelsey brothers do with Taylor Swift as their special guest, which was what about three weeks ago, something like that?

Like

that.

Yeah.

And it was it was downright charming.

It really was.

I mean, look, you can anybody can fake it.

for a few minutes of an interview.

Yeah,

we've all we've all lived through that.

But I mean, this was a two hour conversation that, you know, had had all kinds of drama and history and feelings and everything else.

And it was and it wasn't, it wasn't like homework to listen to it.

It was like a really good conversation.

And you really liked the guys.

And she came off as, you know, extremely

likable, you understand her drive as a musician, but also her drive as an entrepreneur as well.

And, you know, she had the right perspective when she said that she and Travis Kelsey actually they have pretty much the same job description.

And that is to entertain football stadiums filled with people.

That's true.

Yeah, you know, when you when you kind of look at it that way, like, yeah, they're, it's both doing their job.

Yeah.

they both get their their heads on straight.

And so, you know, I wish them all the best.

There's no life has no guarantees, especially when you add the factor of celebrity.

And, you know, just the show business world, the cutthroat business of music and of sports.

They're both a couple of attractive people making their way in the world, you know, in their 30s.

So, you know, it's not going to be all smooth sailing all the time.

And yet I feel like

you know, as well as any other couple, they are equipped to, you know, whether whether the things that rock a lot of celebrity marriages.

It's just true.

And they have managed to make time for each other, which I don't know how that's possible.

Well, in that case, the way they make time for each other sometimes involves global jets.

And yeah, remember like flying from what Japan to the Super Bowl or something and what did he fly to Australia or

something like that.

So,

you know, they

they do have the means to do that.

But I mean, that's how it works.

In that world, no different than there are times that I showed up, you know, someplace where Sherry wasn't expecting me, you know, to provide support or whatever the case.

So, you know, everybody has their own little ways to bring in the romance.

You don't need a million dollars or a billion dollars to do it.

But they do.

But they have

them.

Yep.

I did.

I just have to say though, I did enjoy when, when the news came out somewhere around noon-ish our time yesterday.

Yeah.

I mean, I, I said to somebody said, did you hear that?

I said, the internet just exploded.

Absolutely.

It came down.

I, and get this, get this.

The old guy here at Courier Newsroom, the old guy here was the first one to put it on Slack for our company.

You know, we've got a little water cooler channel, you know, where people just put their random funny stuff or whatever.

And there, there are a lot of Swifties.

And I think all the Swifties were busy texting each other.

Hey, guess what?

Guess what?

And meanwhile, I was like, nobody else has got this up here.

Really?

Okay.

I'll put it up and then you get the, oh my gosh.

Wow.

Wow.

Wow.

It's like, I saw a video yesterday of a TV reporter was about to do a stand up and she was in the Iowa football stadium.

And she gets a notification.

She looks at her phone.

She goes, Oh my God.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

She's jumping around in the stands of the Iowa football stadium for like two minutes.

See now that that you don't want to be that person.

I don't want to do that.

Again, I'm happy for them.

Yeah, I'm not going to jump around and scream and look even somebody that you would jump around and scream with at one of their concerts while they're entertaining you.

That's fair game.

But I mean,

They got engaged.

Let's be happy for them.

I thought similar things.

If you're

happy for them, great, but like, calm down.

In this big, crazy, often stupid world, we need these little moments.

And in this case, because neither one of those two have given us reasons to go, oh, God, what a jerk.

You know, we can legitimately be happy for them.

That's true.

For at least this little moment.

And you know what?

That's

their point.

They are entertainers.

Yeah.

And I do what I said earlier.

I'm not sure about how they do this wedding thing because she's got the album coming out October 3rd.

I know that because I listened to the two hour show.

She got that.

So of course, there will be the obligatory tour that goes along to promote the album.

He's got the NFL season.

I'm guessing it's going to be his final season here.

So I mean, there's plenty of celebrities, they get engaged and I mean, they stay engaged for

years.

How

do they just run off?

Do they just run off and do something quickly?

Really just very personal on Tahiti.

You know, it's something very quick.

My thinking is how much of the wedding are they planning themselves?

There will be people.

Yes.

And good for them.

Again, good luck, kids.

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.

You're listening to the Civic Media Radio Network.

You can stay up to date on what we cover at UpNorth News by getting our daily newsletter.

Head over to UpNorthNewsWI.com.

Click subscribe up in the banner at the top of the homepage.

You also get our Sunday morning newsletter that focuses on political news, especially around Wisconsin.

In today's edition of the newsletter, it's actually what inspired today's climate check segment with Melissa Baldoff later this morning.

And that would be the lawsuit filed by 15 young Wisconsinites ages eight to 17.

the case being brought by two non-profit law firms and arguing that Wisconsin laws that tend to favor fossil fuels violate the constitutional rights of young people to life, liberty and safety.

These are lawsuits that are happening in other states as well and in other countries and in some cases courts are ruling that yes, if this is a constitutional promise that we've made to ourselves and to our children to keep the environment clean,

then our state laws had better reflect that priority.

So again, you can learn more about that in today's newsletter and a little bit later on during our climate check segment.

Tomorrow on the program, it'll be Thursday.

So we'll have Joseph Pecky along as well as Sean O'Malley talking about your money and the markets.

Chad Holmes and Todd Alba will talk about what they're covering for Civic Media.

Sharita Booker will have a rundown of some of the big events going on this Labor Day weekend.

And then we'll also have a conversation with Kate Felton from Eau Claire, formerly of the City Council.

She's a small business owner.

And she has a guest column in Dan Schaeffer's Recombobulation Area, entitled Medicaid and Snap Helped My Family.

Derek Van Orden's vote to cut these programs will be harmful.

So again, that and more coming up tomorrow on the program here, powered by UpNorth News on the Civic Media Radio Network.

One of the

State stories making news this morning deals with the case of Judge Hannah Duggan.

She's the judge in Milwaukee who's facing federal charges for The way she handled a an undocumented immigrant in her courtroom Who was being pursued by federal agents again in a local courthouse and the way that she

tried to avoid a kerfuffle in front of her courtroom.

The guy was later apprehended outside the courthouse, but it led the Trump administration to try to make an example of her and file charges of obstructing immigration officers.

Well, the case will proceed to trial at least for the moment because yesterday a U.S.

federal judge denied a motion from Judge Hannah Dugan's attorney to dismiss the case.

And

In a way, that's kind of good news in terms of, you know, strike one for sanity.

Here's what I mean.

Donald Trump currently has the US Supreme Court in his back pocket.

He appointed three of the justices.

It's

You can argue that all six of those conservative justices are right-wing ideologues.

Occasionally, they have their moments where they appear to be more balanced than political.

But by and large, he's got three, four votes that he can count on every single time.

And it was this US Supreme Court that said,

in so many words.

Well, you can't really prosecute Donald Trump for things that he did while he was president because if he believed them to be official acts of his job as president, well, then you can't prosecute him for that.

Which is fundamentally ridiculous.

And unfortunately, there's not a Supreme Court of the Supreme Court where justices could say to those justices, are you nuts?

Do you really think a president couldn't like shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and say, well, I thought that was part of my official acts or in this case, you know, have a Navy SEAL team raid the home of your political opponent or just the FBI doing what they did to John Bolton the other day?

Apparently there are no guardrails.

There are virtually no limits.

Well, Judge Hannah Dugan rightly said to this federal district judge, hey, look what I did.

Those are part of my official duties and based on, you know, what the U.S.

Supreme Court said about Donald Trump, you can't prosecute for that.

Now, the judge, Lynn Edelman, he was a former Democratic state legislator, so a lot of folks think he's going to be some kind of a liberal judge.

He hasn't been in several cases that have come before him.

He's actually looked at the rule of law and ruled based on that rather than partisan whims.

And he looked at Hannah Dugan's attorney making this claim based on the Trump defense and struck a blow for sanity, essentially, and said, no, no, that's not going to fly here.

No, he didn't say this.

I'm saying it.

He said in so many words, look, the US Supreme Court is a bunch of chuckleheads, and I'm not going along with it.

What happened here?

is not necessarily part of your official duties.

Now, I hasten to add that he, the Judge Lynn Edelman, did not rule on the merits of the case on what Hannah Dugan did, only on this motion to dismiss the charges against her based on this flimsy blank check that the US Supreme Court has given Donald Trump.

So where do we go from here?

Well, there is a chance that Judge Dugan's attorneys

could appeal this rejection of the motion to dismiss the charges, okay, and that could tie things up for months.

That's exactly the kind of thing that Donald Trump and others did throughout the four years of the Biden administration was they appealed and then they appealed this and then they'd make another motion and that would be rejected but they'd appeal and then they'd appeal again then they'd make another motion and that's why Donald Trump

A convicted felon is currently not in some country club incarceration facility right now, but is instead making the oval office look like a joke with all the gold leaf and trimming and we'll get into yesterday's cabinet meeting at some other point.

I mean, that was just a three hour vomit fest of cabinet officers falling all over themselves to, you know, lick his feet and talk about how great he is.

We'll save that for another time.

For now, we just wait to see if Judge Dugan does the same thing, or if it just goes right to trial and a court rules on the merits one way or the other of what it was that she did that day in the Milwaukee County Courthouse.

We will have today's history lesson coming up and a visit with Melissa Kay from WFHR along the way as well.

I'm Pat Krightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Welcome back

to today's history lesson starting with Jeff Cook who was born this day in 1949 passed away three years ago the lead guitarist and fiddler for Alabama who of course has that hit and and so

Many more.

Uh, I guess, how do I describe Alabama to park girls in here?

Um,

it's a weird place.

No, no, no, the band, the band.

They, they were like, uh, Taylor Swift, uh, but for country music, but instead of pop their country and instead of an individual, it's a group, but they're everywhere on the charts and they win every award all the time year after year

and pre social media.

and pre-social media well yeah they just were playing popular music and year after year after year after year they'd win all these awards and it was finally a big deal like wait Alabama didn't win any awards this year

you know in my head it is like impossible to have gotten famous

Without social media.

I know it's interesting that you said that only did that without social media.

Hello Elvis Presley.

Anybody?

Yes, I know.

But it's just so

we had radio stations.

We had newspapers, you know, I mean, we had we had things before social media.

I know it sounds crazy.

But but it's it's how it is the way that we get into things now.

I totally get that it's all the little clips.

For example,

I would not have even thought of listening to that two hour podcast with Taylor Swift and Travis and Jason Kelsey.

Were it not for the little clips of it that I kept seeing on TikTok and on Instagram and eventually it's like it wore me down.

I think I like to listen to this.

That's

how I've found most of the things that I like now,

I think.

Well, I think you have to because, I mean, again.

When we were growing up, you know, the way the way you found it was you only had three channels and you only had like three radio stations in town, and they threw everything at you.

And eventually you

found out which things you liked and didn't like well here the the modern day equivalent is uh you got unlimited channels so you just got to scroll scroll scroll scroll and something sticks out at you yeah and i i i think that if alabama hadn't existed back then and we're around now with their talent and everything i think they still find a way to get famous in the social media age

and

that's the

mark of a good band

Yes, that's exactly it.

Somebody told me I asked for career advice as a college freshman.

And I remember him saying, Well, you know, the cream always rises to the top.

So if you're good, if you're the cream of the crop, you will eventually get there.

Just keep doing just keep doing what you're doing.

Keep being good at it.

And I'm still waiting.

I'm hoping to get good at this someday real soon.

Yeah, close.

Let's stay in 1955.

Fats Domino made it into the top 10.

All right, here's

where, again, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm again going to talk about another podcast that I listened to, a history of rock and roll and 500 songs.

And I say it because of this.

As the host, Andrew Hickey, keeps bringing up all these different songs and artists like Fats Domino.

And they, again, this is the 1950s, had to watch as over and over again, their original music was covered by some bland white artist and went farther up the charts.

As noted in today's history lesson, it reads like this, That's Domino's Ain't That a Shame hits number 10, becoming the first ever R&B song to hit the top 10 on the pop chart.

It would, again, it peaked at number 10.

Three weeks later, the version by Pat Boone would hit number one on the charts, and then he'll play the two songs back to back, and you're just embarrassed.

You hear Pat Boone trying to sound cool, and it's just, it's sadness.

It just really is.

So I feel like we're in a better place now.

So that.

Let's see, this week in 1964 Disney put out its newest movie.

It was a live-action part animated feature, Mary Poppins, written by the Sherman

Brothers.

Of course, to be Dick Van Dyke, who is still with us, Julie Andrews as well.

Here's where, again, I find out whether classic movies, how long do they stay classic movies?

So, Parker, Mary Poppins,

you ever see it?

I have not seen it.

Okay,

I'm

ashamed to say because I

don't know.

No.

No, it's a classic I should

have seen this movie Pat

No, there's things you should have been ashamed of not knowing last week about new coke coming out.

Okay We're still honest That you should have known I was not expecting

to know I have had multiple conversations since new coke About

how

that was a ridiculous expectation of you of me.

Yes

I don't think I can agree with that.

Again, this was huge.

Coca-Cola had changed their recipe.

We're not doing this again.

Minstrels should still be singing songs of that, what a terrible thing it was.

Anyway...

So you're okay if you didn't know a movie that Disney released in 1964.

That is totally understandable.

Let's see, Roger puts up on Facebook, speaking of Elvis, this day in 1969, Elvis' milestone single, Suspicious Minds was first released.

It became the king's first billboard number one hit in seven years.

It was also his 17th number one hit and his final number one hit as well.

So thank you, Roger, for throwing that one in.

Let's throw in Tracy Chapman next.

from her self titled debut album.

It raced to the top of the charts this week in 1988 in part because of a song you all know.

Who did the remake now?

Oh, Luke

Holmes.

When I

was coaching for tennis during college, I had coached during a tennis camp that my high school coach had been doing.

And the remake of this song was very popular during that time.

And one of the coaches said, you know, every time I hear this song, I don't think they say fast car.

I hear fat ass car.

Um,

no.

I do.

In the remake, I do hear that.

Now that it has been pointed out to me.

Um, okay.

Let's see.

Uh, there is a- I was just looking at a billboard article about this that said, uh, Luke Combs says, Tracy Chapman pointed out a lyric mistake in his cover, and Luke Combs says, I wanted to crawl in a hole when I heard it.

And it's it's not that big a mistake the the song's final line in there It says we got to make a decision and he's saying still got to make a decision Doesn't strike me as that big a deal.

I am not moved by this change in lyrics

No, but again the fact that Luke Combs could not have been more You know Praising of Tracy Chapman you could tell he really

loved her.

The album, like I said, really big back in 1988.

I have said many a time I don't get the infatuation with the remake.

He doesn't really

add

any value to it.

I'm still not sure why it caught fire the way that it did other than that it's, you know, a decent song.

And it did all right.

But again, the original was on an album.

The debut album by Tracy Chapman was number one this week in 1988.

Alright, let's move on to 1991, another debut album, this one by Pearl Jam, and they released their debut album, 10, in 1991.

I believe that this was put in the history notes last year and it would be Greg Bach that needed to tell me that that was even flow because right now you could tie me to you know an anthill and cover me with honey and I wouldn't be able to tell you that it was even flow.

In fact, here's how bad it got.

Last night we were playing a trivia game with our daughter and a couple of grandkids.

There's something called Jackbox.

They're games that

you can play

on your computer or TV.

We're playing that.

And one of the last questions was based on public opinion surveys.

What were the quintessential top three bands of the 90s?

Okay.

And they'd list, you know, NSYNC and Backstreet Boys and Nirvana and all kinds of things.

So they list nine different things you're supposed to list the top three.

And all of us gave Pearl Jam zero votes.

And yet Pearl Jam came off as like number one.

of what people said, what is the quintessential 90s band?

So I am not in the Pearl Jam target audience, shall we say?

Yeah, I suppose.

I guess Nirvana would have been my pick.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Here's my wheelhouse.

This next one is from 1977.

This would be Jackson Brown with a live performance.

You can steal here on the radio today.

This would be the title track from running on empty and here's the here's the Oh, no.

Oh, no, we've made Tony mad.

What?

How dare you not give Pearl Jam respect?

It's just I just wasn't there at the time.

Okay.

It was the 90s.

We had two daughters.

I was it was nothing but Disney movies and Barney.

I'm sorry.

There was

There was no time for Pearl Jam or Nirvana.

Anything like that.

Polaroids.

It was Aladdin.

It was Beauty and the Beast.

It was Little Mermaid.

It was Lion King.

That's it.

That's the list.

That's all I had time for.

Not Pearl Jam.

I'm sorry.

Getting back to Jackson Brown here, who is singing and running on NPO in the background.

From that album.

had these live songs that had not been released as studio cuts before.

It's just one of those live albums that really caught on.

And it included the loadout and stay, which we don't have time to play because the loadout I think is like a 10 minute song or something like that.

But anyway, it was all recorded this day in 1977 at the Maryweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland is where this was recorded 48 years ago today.

Jackson Brown and Steve Martin.

just put out a new song along with Allison Martin and it is a song again that I saw just on social media I think on Facebook and it's a song about getting older and it's called Dear Time and boy I'll tell you for somebody is busy thinking about their retirement some day I'm like oh boy that was you know it's a reminder time doesn't care no

Time is not, you know, concerned with you.

Time

has undefeated.

Tony with a response, Pat, where did you learn your love for Flannel if not from Eddie Vedder?

Tony, we're in Wisconsin.

Everybody knows I got my love of Flannel from Sean Duffy.

no oh god oh i thought you were gonna say like whole bunion oh oh god thank you thank you it was it was an it was an easy it was an easy shot i had to take it uh this day in 1991 is the cold war was uh coming in at zen phases here the european community recognized the independence of the baltic states of estonia latvia and lithuania

And finally a sad item to close with here on this day in 1990, 35 year old Stevie Ray Vaughn died in a helicopter crash near East Troy after a concert at Alpine Valley.

Earlier he had appeared with Robert Cray, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton and his older brother Jimmy Vaughn.

So we remember Stevie Ray Vaughn as we go to break.

I'm Pat Crightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

You can now find up north news on blue sky as well.

If you're looking for an alternative to the dumpster fire, formerly known as Twitter.

Yes, we're still on Twitter too.

Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, all the social media joints.

We are there, including segments like these where we get to have fun with our friend Melissa K from WFHR and WIRI, home of just the nicest little parking lot party that you could want for the station's 85th anniversary celebration last week.

Melissa, how are you?

Good morning.

I am excellent.

What wasn't that fun?

It was fun.

We had such a great time.

Thank you so much for coming and helping promote our party.

Absolutely.

It was it was wonderful to be there.

Everybody was so friendly.

I've done a little write up on the website up front news wi.com, which you can go read.

But I can tell you I borrowed liberally some of the information that Melissa put in her write up as well, which you can find over at civic media dot us and on the W F HR.

homepage that you would find there.

Just because there was so much history.

And I love that.

I love history anyway.

I love radio.

So now you add radio plus history.

And patches gets to nerd out.

You had all these old radios in there.

You had all these remembrances.

Oh, yeah, I didn't

send you those pictures yet.

Oh, that's okay.

Oh, that's okay.

It was just it was just great to be a part of it.

And I'm sure the folks in the community had a lot of nice things to say while they came to visit as well.

Yeah, and we had so many nonprofits there that are regular guests on our show and The the outpouring of just everybody willing to come together and share the information that we need in our community There's gonna be more articles coming.

I hope I'm gonna cross my fingers on this but Pam Hilke who manages our office has so much history collected from over the years that there's opportunities for for more history articles Pat

That's because Pam's been there since 1977.

Yes,

this is true.

That's a man.

And there's a photo in your article and the one that we put up north news of her and James modeling the the vintage jackets.

Yes, the shiny shiny.

Those were all the rage and down in the basement somewhere is mine from the college radio station WEC.

There's there's one there from TV 13 as well.

That's what you had to have.

You had to have the shiny nylon jackets back in the day with the

logo.

Yep.

I mean, everything's coming around again.

So why not?

Well, sure, I could I could totally see doing that.

So you could see that, you know, all the newspaper clippings and

and the cookbook because it felt like every radio station, well, the hometown full service ones had a cookbook back in the day.

And WFHR was no exception.

And in fact, that that cover model from the 50th anniversary one 35 years ago was part of the festivities last week.

He was

milk steel was the cover model for our 50th anniversary cookbook edition.

And he was our celebrity judge for the the the staff desert sweet off.

Um, I didn't win, but that's okay.

Um, yes, we can, we can not talk about that.

What, what did you make?

I made rhubarb juice.

Well, no, I was a

solid second.

I was

second in both Milt's voting and the listener favorites, but no, it's, it's fabulous.

It's something my grandma used, my grandma Ruth used to make every summer when we were kids and I loved it.

It's

so good.

bourbon in it or something.

I mean, what's the key to making it not taste like rumen or like rhubarb?

It has jello.

Jello,

sugar, and orange juice, but little tiny amounts.

It's mostly just rhubarb.

I thought you were going to say little tiny amounts of rhubarb just so it can be labeled as such.

All

right.

But the cookbook we're excited about and we want to get listener submissions, we have it on our website.

Right now it's in the carousel.

So

you have

to like scroll through the carousel at the top of the webpage to find it.

We're

hoping to

get a static link that's just there.

But yeah, go there.

You submit your recipes.

You can just swing by with your recipe card and Pam will make a copy of it for you.

It's super easy.

We want to just gather all the recipes we can for our 85th anniversary edition, which is in November.

And it's very unusual that, you know, again, because it is

kind of an older station with the older radios and everything.

It's actually not a copier.

Pam puts it on a mimeograph machine and just rolls the little drum.

Something something like that.

The

ink on it first.

Yep.

You know, he's it always smells so good.

He's like, don't stay in the mimeograph room too long, you'll pass out, you

know,

Uh,

you've got some live remotes coming up as well.

We do.

Our next one is the, uh, downtown grand affair on September 7th.

Um, we'll be there all day.

This is a big event for our downtown businesses to come out and, um, open their doors and invite people down.

Our downtown is really pretty with the bridge and the lights and the, and the, I don't know, I think old fashioned downtowns are just

They're cool.

And

then we

have the lights of love in November and the rekindle spirit parade also in November.

So okay to get out in the community.

And folks, of course, are wondering when's Pat gonna get to the point?

How's Lelu?

Lelu is good.

We rearranged the cages now on the floor so that they can get in and out by themselves and I don't have to pick them up.

they're getting used to the new space, they found a new place to hide.

It's underneath underneath a little table over there.

So sometimes it's a find the leelu.

You can't really see them.

So but we're adjusting, we're working on things.

Well, that makes it really incumbent to watch where you're walking, you know,

um, well, not in there.

I do anyway.

And I'm starting to get that because once they're out and about, yeah, I'm going to have to watch.

where I'm walking all the time.

So I am

cognizant of it, but right now they're in a little locked in space.

So.

Okay.

Now that works out well.

And how about your Labor Day weekend?

Anything coming up special?

I'm going to do more sewing.

I've really been getting into making these block patterns.

And I'm still working on mine.

And it's it's it's a uphill battle.

like with a singer sewing machine type of situation.

I have a

Husqvarna.

I don't even know if there are singer sewing machines anymore.

That's a big

one.

It used to be there was nothing but, you know, and now

brother, singer, Husqvarna.

Husqvarna.

Elna.

Them is chainsaws.

I wouldn't sew with a chainsaw, but I suppose.

You know, if you get the machinery just right.

Yeah, good point.

Melissa K can catch you at 105.5 WIRI and 97.5 WFHR.

Melissa, thanks again for having us out for the anniversary party and you have a great holiday weekend.

Yeah, you too, Pat.

All right, take care.

Coming up in the next hour, we're going to be talking to Randy Weingarten, the national president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Talk to her early this morning.

She's on her way out to an event in Wisconsin later today.

I'm Pat Crightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Live, across Wisconsin on Civic Media, you're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.

Now, for my Lake Basota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.

Hey, good morning.

It is 706 on this Wednesday morning, August 27th.

Nice to have you back here up north.

Live from Lake Wissota on the Civic Media Radio Network, Parker Olson is producing things down in Madison Studio A2.

Coming up later this hour, we're going to be talking to the National President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randy Weingarten.

She is on her way to Wisconsin as we speak for an event later today, all about the big bloated boondoggle from Trump and congressional Republicans and the damage it's going to do to education, health care, and just life overall in the state of Wisconsin as well as around the country.

So we'll talk to Randy Weingarten about that.

Coming up in just a few minutes from now, about 7.35 we'll get that started.

And in our next hour, we'll talk to author Laura Bird about book banning.

They seem to spring up this time of year like weeds.

When the school year gets going, there are people who talk about banning books from certain school libraries.

We'll talk about what motivates that, some of the misinformation about it.

what you can do when these kinds of measures come up in your local school.

That's all along the way.

Temperatures right now include 53 here in the Chippewa Valley, 55 in La Crosse, it's 53 in Amory, 54 in Oshkosh.

And at the Fork and Knife Restaurant in Manitowoc, it is 55 degrees right now.

So we've got a nice pleasant morning here that takes us to Brittany and a forecast for today, which seems almost as pretty and picture perfect as yesterday with maybe a change in the not too distant future.

Brittany, good morning.

How are you?

Good morning.

I am pretty, pretty good.

You're still doing.

Yes, which is why I see that we still got the hoodie going here is we were talking yesterday, you know, Hans Brighton Moser at the lend is hoodie to his daughter.

I had to lend a hoodie to my grandson.

And it's like, how many hoodies?

Some people just collect all manner of things.

I've maybe got a half a dozen hoodies.

Well, how's your hoodie game over there?

Oh,

Oh, it's strong.

I have a ton of hoodies.

The one thing I get when I go visit and travel places or go see something cool, like I'm wearing pictured rocks hoodie right now.

So, you know, it's a destination kind of gathering like

I

like to do.

But

hey, it's perfect for camping.

It's perfect to lend.

It's perfect for mornings like this.

As you say, it's perfect for about nine, 10 months out of the year or like right now in the middle of summer in August.

It's hoodie weather for today.

One more day.

Sure is.

It is 43 degrees in Antigo and Merrill.

That is the cold spot in the state.

Meanwhile, Ashland and Madeline Island sitting pretty at 61 degrees right now.

but that's because it's cloudy.

And that's because you've got rain rolling through this morning.

This cold front is gonna be sagging south through the state tonight and overnight.

But throughout the day today, we're still gonna see a lot of sunshine, especially south and west in the state, but further north and east, those showers are already starting to move through, like I mentioned, mainly off Lake Superior this morning, kind of hugging that border between the UP and Wisconsin through this afternoon.

And then that front pushes everything through later tonight.

So some light showers, maybe some thunder out there.

These are not going to be strong or severe storms.

They're really only going to bring a trace of rain to a quarter of an inch at max highs today, still hitting the mid seventies all across the state.

So this is very comfortable conditions by tomorrow after the cold front passes.

We are looking at 60 to 65 degrees for a good eastern half of the state.

But out west, especially southwest, you could still hit some upper 70s tomorrow.

So this cold front isn't really reinforcing anything too wild.

But when we go Thursday night, I will say chances of frost far northeast do start to sink in just far.

Now as we go into the weekend, cooler 60s on Friday, mid 60s to mid 70s on Saturday and Sunday.

And then we're going to be in the upper 70s as we move into Monday for Memorial Day.

So it is warming up.

Summer weather is still coming back, but still cold blast today.

Labor Day.

Now, before anybody goes, oh, it's a rerun.

They're talking about Memorial Day.

No, Labor Day is what we're talking about.

I'm

sorry.

Did I say that?

It's all right.

You know, it's in the spirit of summer.

Exactly.

Well, and that's when you're more likely to get, you know, 60s would be Memorial Day Labor Day.

You'd want to see your 80s.

Oh, look, oh, look, Pat's whining again.

Let's go to Robin Tigerton.

Good morning.

Partly cloudy and 50.

Yesterday I had mowing jobs in Wittenberg, and highways 29 and 45.

We're busy with traffic before the Labor Day weekend.

Today I've got Lonstomo and Tigerton.

The weather has been perfect.

I love the fall like weather he writes.

It's another hoodie start.

I keep them in my truck.

That way you can wear them in the morning, then by noon, take the hoodie off as it gets warmer.

In other words, layers.

What do we tell everybody?

Yep, it's it's layer season already.

Have your layers nearby.

And it is that that is, you know, one of the the pleasant parts of living here is that if you've got a collection of hoodies.

Oh, the way Brittany does, you know, you're not like, yeah, you're not wearing the same thing over and over again.

So all right, Brittany, thank you so much.

We'll talk to you next hour.

Sounds good.

All right.

Hey, sign up for our daily newsletter up north news wi.com is the place to go hit subscribe up in the top banner.

In today's edition, it includes a story about the old paps brewery in Milwaukee.

Which believe it or not I actually worked there for a week once I was doing a bunch of different office jobs and Worked in the office as a perhaps for a while, but anyway the old brewery still there being refurbished into all kinds of other uses and the I'm gonna tell you the place is called best place at the historic perhaps brewery

And I know that throws some people off until I remind them that Jacob Best was the name of the guy that started the brewery that eventually became Papst.

So Best Place is named for Jacob Best.

And Best Place just scored a $50,000 grant as part of the American Express National Trust for Historic Preservation.

backing historic small businesses.

It will give best place and other restaurants around the U.S.

a chance to invest in potential renovations and expansion.

So if you're in the Milwaukee area and you have not been over in the old Papsbury area recently, you should go take a look at some of the buildings that are there and the ways that they have been redone.

Also in the newsletter is an article from Selena Heller talking about Wisconsin retirees

who recognized that Social Security, having just turned 90 years old, needs to be strengthened, not threatened, the way it's being threatened right now by the current regime in Congress.

And there's also an article in there about a new climate lawsuit.

You see these in several states, Hawaii most notably, but it's been in Montana, I want to say Florida and New York, but now here in Wisconsin as well, where young people helped by nonprofits are filing lawsuits

to make sure that state laws are adhered to the state constitution.

when it comes to ensuring that young people have life, liberty and safety, and that includes the environment they live in.

And we're going to be talking more about this with Melissa Baldoff in this week's climate check.

That'll be coming up at 8 20 here on these mornings powered by Up North News on the Civic Media Radio Network.

Tony shouting layers on YouTube with what has to be seven or eight exclamation points on there.

Yes, we're very much in favor of layers here.

The Brewers were winners.

Once again, they had to come, not come back, but they had to protect what had been an easy lead, 6-0 on Monday.

And again, 6-0 last night.

But in both cases, they turned into nail biters, Isaac Collins.

had a bases loaded sacrifice fly in the bottom of the ninth to bring home the winning run nine to eight.

The final William Contreras and Bryce Durang each hit two run homers for the Brewers.

Game three of that series takes place this evening.

Once again, the pregame starts at six oh five on civic media stations in Richland Center, Oshkosh Racine, Park Falls and Hayward.

I'm gonna read now from an article in the New York Times, Katie Rogers, White House reporter.

And usually I'll look at an article and then maybe interpret some of what I'm seeing here, but Katie Rogers' writing really gets to the heart of the essence of the nauseating spirit of whatever that thing was that happened in the White House yesterday.

Stensibly, it was known as a cabinet meeting.

But it lasted three hours and 15 minutes, and it was just three hours and 15 minutes of his cabinet members going around the table and offering him praise.

That's all it was.

It was a televised meeting that lasted almost half the work day.

Katie Rogers writes, in front of a wall of cameras, the old apprentice host offered a clear window into the way he was running his administration, starting with an ego.

that appeared to need frequent feeding and blustery stamina.

This has never been done before, the president said at one point in between calling on cabinet secretaries to speak and marveling over reporters' ability to hold microphones and cameras aloft for several hours.

Yeah, they were really looking forward to that part.

What was supposed to be a quick photo spray becomes three hours of cabinet officers taking their turns.

She writes, each working a little bit harder than the last to offer Mr. Trump praise and assure him that they were working to tackle his long list of grievances.

They talked about, you know, transgender.

sports, violent crime crackdowns, the ongoing threat of windmills, the foul state of traffic medians, the speed with which water flows, and attempts at securing peace deals for as many as seven international wars, a number that seems to crow by the day, she writes.

Mr. Trump, a pop culture maven.

had relatively little to say about the biggest news of the day.

That would be Taylor Swift's engagement to Travis Kelsey, other than saying, I wish them a lot of luck.

The Cabinet event was billed as a celebration of American workers ahead of Labor Day.

Yet with a running time of three hours and 15 minutes, it would be considered a wildly inefficient meeting at any other workplace.

The actual policy menu was just gristle in comparison to red meat politics, but for an afternoon the Trump White House really was as radically transparent as Trump likes to say it is.

There's something really nice about just, you know, the openness of what we're doing, Mr. Trump mused as he closed out the gathering.

He also seemed interested in dangling the idea that at any moment,

his cabinet members could be humiliated on national tv he said each one of these people spoke apparently happy with their performances if i thought one of them did badly i would call that person out as the hours ticked by trump's cabinet members highlighted the cost in hours in money perhaps in karma of keeping a seat at his table and many did so

while testing the apparently imaginary boundaries of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities on the job.

The updates ranged from the enthusiastic to the servile, and they went on for hours.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the Labor Secretary, implored the president to come to her agency and look at his big, beautiful face on a banner.

And if you've never seen that,

Go look at it.

Go look up the photo of how in front of the Labor Department and perhaps a couple of other Washington DC buildings, they have put up banners that are several stories tall with Trump's face on them.

And if you're looking for them on social media, no doubt you will see those banners compared side by side with similar banners on government buildings in Moscow and China.

There was Robert F. Kennedy talking about radioactive shrimp and saving the whales from wind power.

The same Robert Kennedy Jr.

who once sawed the head off a whale and then drove it home.

Trump and Kennedy engaged them back and forth about the rates of autism in young boys.

Science having nothing to do with anything in the conversation.

On and on it went with one of his cabinet members saying,

The only thing I wish for, he says, is that the Nobel Committee finally gets its act together and realizes you are the single finest candidate since the Nobel Peace Prize was created.

Thus ends the three-hour cabinet meeting that you all paid for at the White House today.

Randy Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, will be joining us in about 15 minutes.

I'm Pac Rightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

you

There's a chance that during the break you might have heard Dan Schaefer from the Reconpopulation area talking about some of the political news that he follows So I just wanted to remind you that one of his most recent articles that he talked about here yesterday

is called a too early breakdown of the 2026 race for governor in Wisconsin.

And of course, you'll find that over at the recombobulationarea.news.

And as the political editor for civic media, you find a lot of what he's covering on civicmedia.us as well.

Also on one of the civic media newscasts here this morning, they're talking about the Knowles Nelson stewardship program, or just the stewardship program for short, a program that began back in 1989 and has been renewed throughout the years as a way to purchase land for conservation, provide easements to protect land from over development, and then do things to the land that make it more.

accessible to the public for recreation and relaxation rather than, you know, another strip mall and another golf course.

It has for years been a one of the shining stars of bipartisanship.

Back when Republicans were more like, you know, Teddy Roosevelt Republicans and understood that this is a big country.

There's plenty of room for development.

There's plenty of room for people, but there's some places that if you don't protect them, if you don't conserve them, they're going to be lost forever.

It was Teddy Roosevelt Republicans that gave us the National Park System, the anniversary of which we celebrated, was it yesterday.

But that's not how it's working anymore.

because as the Republican Party has been captured more by, you know, say the William McKinley Republicans who were in charge just before Teddy Roosevelt, the people who think you can run the economy based on tariffs, the people who feel like there's no piece of land that can't be bulldozed and made money off of it.

It's this group of Republicans that basically took it out of the budget.

Governor Tony Evers proposed a large reauthorization for the program, about a billion dollars over 10 years.

And instead, Republicans remove the program entirely.

And so the program is funded through 2026.

But after that, it would go away.

Well, now both Republicans trying to save face and Democrats are trying to save the Knowles Nelson stewardship program.

And it's that they disagree on the manner in which to do it that is noteworthy right now.

But I'm going to remain hopeful that the two sides can come together and find ways to renew the program, provide the oversight that Republicans are looking for while continuing its core mission of making sure that Wisconsin remains this beautiful place.

to live in, to work in, to study in, to do business in.

And we do, like I say, have room.

We have room for farming.

We have room for recreation.

We have room for development.

But to just allow it to happen completely without restraint, without any thought of conservation would just be an absolute tragedy.

So Democrats have put out their version of the legislation.

There would be an oversight board, 17 people on there, $72 million in spending each year, which is up from the current $33 million, but again, less than what Governor Evers was proposing, which would have been up to $100 million per year.

Of the $72 million in spending that would be authorized under the Democratic bill,

about 17 million would be for land acquisition, 45 million for upkeep and repair of current property so that we can enjoy these places because again it makes no sense to turn a place into a recreational area and then not do the maintenance to keep it a nice place to go.

Another 8 million would be for local boat facilities and 2 million more for motorized recreation programs.

Under the Democratic bill

Projects costing two and a half million dollars or more would require approval by this new board.

And if that board did not take up a project for review within 120 days or four months, it would be considered automatically approved.

That of course is in response to what Republicans had been doing with stewardship programs and that was bottling them up in committee without any timeline at all.

So they didn't have to go on record as saying they were against conservation programs.

They just simply had to keep them bottled up in committee and never have them come up for a vote.

Republicans that put forward their own version of the bill as well, that would bring back some kind of a stewardship program.

Again, it would be with some oversight.

I believe the Republican bill was about a million dollars that would require a board approval in order to move forward.

Authors of the Republican proposal are Tony Kurtz and Patrick Teston of Stevens Point, and they say they are looking forward to working with Democrats to reform and reauthorize the stewardship program according to Teston.

He says he looks forward to reviewing the proposal brought forward by my Democrat colleagues to see where we can work together and find common good.

Well, if you're still

Unable to actually say the word democratic when talking about the Democratic Party I have reason to cast doubt on whether you're actually going to be negotiating in good faith But you know again, that's another one of those own the libs kinds of things is to mistake the name of the party It's really funny if you're a Republican apparently so that's where we sit with the stewardship program currently set to expire at the end of 2026 and now with fairer maps it becomes

A little bit easier for voters to see if Republicans want to head into the 2026 cycle, saying that they are doing more than paying lip service to conserving land in Wisconsin for future use for our grandkids and for our current recreational and relaxation needs.

So more to come on that.

Coming up next, we're going to talk to the president, the national president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randy Weingarten.

I'm Pat Critello, this is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Welcome back.

It's time for our homeroom segment where we highlight public schools and the threats they face from politicians and grifters alike.

We have a special guest this morning, the national president of the American Federation of Teachers, AFT, Randy Weingarten.

She's en route right now to Eau Claire for an event later today called Fighting Back, a Western Wisconsin community forum.

She'll be joined by labor leaders, including AFT Wisconsin President John Shelton, who we heard from on Monday, Representative Christian Phelps, who visited with us last Wednesday, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly.

So this is a panel that clearly knows what is currently spewing out of Washington, DC.

I talked to Randy Weingarten just around five o'clock this morning, just before she got on the plane to head this way.

And I started by asking what motivated her to attend today's event right here in the Heartland.

So first, I never go where I'm not invited.

And I was asked to come by all, by our Wisconsin leadership and membership to talk to them, you know, Claire, about what the impact

act of this, you know, of the federal policies are on Wisconsin.

And, you know, what has happened in terms of the third district, instead of the current occupant of the third congressional district of helping people in Wisconsin, it looks like he's more interested in freeing favor with Donald Trump.

And so we wanted to really talk to members and talk to community

uh activists about what the real deal is in terms of the impact of the bill that passed this summer and frankly um how there's a rollback instead of instead of actually helping people have a better act economic life it's really hurting people so whether it's getting rid of the clean energy jobs or whether it's the um what has happened in the rollbacks of nutritional services

what's happening in terms of the rollbacks of Medicaid, which is really going to hurt places like healthcare centers in Black River Falls and Sparta.

There's real impacts in this bill that basically gave a tax cut to the rich.

So we wanted to talk about this and talk about it in terms of what the real deal is.

And that's why I'm coming to Wisconsin today.

I've been in Wisconsin many, many, many, many times.

But I'm really honored to be with the people who make a difference in the lives of others today.

Well, it's interesting that you mentioned all of those other areas.

It would be enough if just education leaders talked about the cuts separately or health care leaders, people about local services.

But there appear to be no silos in this effort to convey all of the damage in this mega bill.

No, there's no silos.

And in fact, well, actually, there is one silo.

Billionaires.

Billionaires did very, very, very, very well in this bill.

But what's happened is, and you see it in Mr. Trump's poll numbers, you see it in terms of, you know, the dystopian fear that people have in America right now, the division, the fear, they're far from a golden age.

What we're seeing is that people voted for him because they wanted a better life.

And as a labor movement, we know that.

We fight every day for a better life for working people.

So people have a good life.

They're entitled to a good life.

That's what workers deserve.

The hard work they put in every day.

But what's happened is between the increases in prices, the decreases in affordability, and now all this federal policy that seems to make it worse, it's not a surprise to me that Donald Trump is now changing the agenda.

and trying to talk about crime because the economic working people are having a harder time right now.

And there's no silos, you're right.

So it's not just about the abandonment of public education and higher education that he's done, but it's all these kind of foundational supports that federal policy had done to help people have a better life.

We're talking to Randy Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers coming to Wisconsin for a special event today about the cuts in the Trump mega bill.

And I've heard you describe these cuts as children facing, which I take to mean you're not going to take care of these cuts by buying fewer staplers for the classrooms and some extra equipment in the cafeteria.

Just how how direct will

parents and children and educators feel from these cuts.

So there's several different ways they're going to feel it.

This is what people are going to feel immediately.

Snap or nutritional services.

We basically in America try to try to make sure we subsidize every child's lunch and breakfast.

That's going to change.

We're going to go back to lunch shaming.

which is one of the coolest things that we can do to kids, meaning that they have to pay for their lunch or show that they are poor in order to get their lunch for free.

That's really terrible to do in a school.

That's going to happen almost immediately because of all the red tape.

Then let's take special needs kids.

Under the federal law right now, and sorry, I am a social studies teacher, there are two ways that we help special needs kids.

One is through something called the IDEA, which is the Individuals with Disabilities and in Education Act.

That money should have been increased.

It has been increased every year.

It was flat.

It was not increased this year.

And so what's happening is districts have to find more and more money themselves.

And number two, right now, even worse, the grants that were the secondary grants that many districts got, those grants have been cut by Linda McMahon.

So that's making it harder, like after school and summer school, we got some of them replaced, but that's making it harder.

And number three, Medicaid, it's called different things in different states.

but it's pays for things like wheelchairs and accessibility and OTs and PT's and every parent with a kid with a disability understands what I'm talking about.

All that stuff is being pulled back.

So districts, if you have a kid who has mobility issues, you need a PT.

If you don't have a physical therapist, then how is that kid going to go to school?

So what's happening is that districts all across

Wisconsin are scurrying.

And you know, in Wisconsin, what happened when Scott Walker cut all that funding statewide?

You saw what happened to schools.

You saw what happened to schools.

And so this is happening in lots of different places.

And districts are basically saying, what are we supposed to do?

Effectively, they have to go to the taxpayers next year to get a tax increase.

So what Donald Trump has done,

is he's forced, if school districts want to have these services, they're forcing people to pay more taxes locally so that Donald Trump could give a tax cut to billionaires.

And finally, there continue to be large crowds that show up at events like this, at listing sessions, primarily if you're Democrats, but the occasional Republican pops up.

And again, a large crowd wants to show up.

Even though the bill is passed, the bill can't be stopped anymore.

Why do you think that is and then to wrap things up moving forward?

What is it that you would like people to do?

So it's really important and and again, I'm putting my social studies head on right now We have never been in a moment like this in America and I don't care and look I actually left the DNC the Democratic National Committee I said no, I don't want to be part of it anymore.

I want to have a little bit more independence here I don't care if you're a Republican and independent a Democrat in America

our voice matters, and people's voices matter.

And the only, these politicians need to be accountable to the people on the ground, not so scared of Donald Trump that they don't listen to the people on the ground.

Now I understand why they're scared of Donald Trump, he bullies people, you know, there's a lot of squeeds on Twitter.

I understand why people are afraid, but if you're a politician elected to represent District 3, you've got to represent the people in District 3.

And then that's part of the reason why people have to show up.

People have to exercise their voice.

You can't just exercise your voice a minute before an election.

This has to be about what is good for Americans and for us.

What is good for working people?

Working people made America.

Working people deserve to have policy in America that helps them, not hurts them.

And that's what we're trying to do here.

Randy Weingarten is national president of the American Federation of Teachers.

Randy, thank you very much.

Thank you for your time safe travels.

Thank you so much.

And there's Randy Weingarten.

Talk to her about five o'clock this morning before she hopped on the plane to head out for the event in Eau Claire later today.

So there was only so much ground that we could cover.

For example, one of the areas we didn't get into was the way that this regime is trying to all but abolish the US Department of Education.

And by the way, for folks going, why do you say regime?

Why don't you just say Trump administration?

There's actually a reason for that.

It would be called the Trump administration if it were just as an executive branch facing some guardrails from either Congress or the United States Supreme Court.

the fact that Congress and the Supreme Court have become wholly owned subsidiaries of Trump Incorporated means you basically have a regime right now.

The minority party in this case, the Democratic Party, you know, can't do much whether Republicans or Democrats are in the minority.

There's only so much they can do.

Our system works with its checks and balances.

If there are people within your own parties who say, sir or ma'am, I agree with you much of the time, but not on this one.

And there have been more times than any of us can count the number of instances where, again, if we still had, say, a John McCain, or if Mitt Romney had a spine, would be able to stand up and say, sorry, sir, you can't impose tariffs unilaterally.

That's something only Congress can do.

You can't abolish a cabinet agency.

That's only something Congress can do.

But Congress and the Supreme Court, they're just letting this all go.

I mean, we're actually to the point now where Trump mused yesterday about changing the name of the Department of Defense back to the War Department because he says it sounds nicer.

I mean, this is the kind of thing we're dealing with these days.

So that's why I say regime.

So they're going after the US Department of Education and talking about giving education back to the states quote unquote, we're giving education back to the states.

But

State education leaders are going to tell you whether it's at this event today in Eau Claire or any other time that they're getting the buck passed to them, but not the bucks.

They're not getting any of the support that they would otherwise be getting from a federal government that wanted to operate in partnership to educate our children.

No different than this current legislature in Madison.

Again, does not want to be a partner in the education of our children.

They want the dismantling and the privatization of our public schools and they do it slowly year after year with funding that does not keep up with inflation and instead pours more resources into a voucher program for schools that are performed no better.

There's zero empirical evidence that on the whole they perform better, but

They can bend certain rules.

They can discriminate in certain ways.

And they help, again, move us toward an era where people can actually make corporate profits and shareholder dividends off the education of our children.

Those are the folks that are in charge right now.

And so for somebody like Randy Weingarten to come to Wisconsin and all these other leaders together together to call public attention to it is a necessary thing in this day and age.

Because again, the bill may have passed.

A lot of these cuts are going to happen.

And it's going to take a very long time to recover from them, if at all.

But one of the first things you do is try to stop the bleeding.

Stop letting things get worse.

And that won't happen now until, you know, the next midterm elections.

Provided those midterm elections actually go on without being rigged or otherwise obstructed.

I'm Pat Crightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network, Earl Ingram, Sean O'Malley, Joseph Peckie, all coming up in our eight o'clock hour.

We'll be back.

Right now it's 53 degrees here in the Chippewa Valley.

It is 56 in La Crosse.

Oshkosh, you're at 56.

Amory 55 and in front of Rooster's Restaurant in Racine it is 54 degrees right now.

Coming up later across the Civic Media Radio Network the Maggie Dawn Show is on from four until six and let's see today on the program she's got state representative Jody Emerson from the Chippewa Valley showing up at about 4 30 this afternoon and then after five o'clock an interesting

bipartisan slate here.

You've got former Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen and Mike Tate, the former chair of the State Democratic Party.

They are two members of the Democracy Defense Project and they will be talking about the attacks on mail-in voting by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

I'm not aware of anybody else, honestly, who's going after mail-in voting with as much prominence as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

and why we're letting that happen is beyond me, but to credit Republicans, and again, I've talked about that spinal fortitude that more Republicans need.

I'd like to see it out of current elected officials, but I'll take it from former elected officials like J.B.

Van Hollen and others who are standing up as part of the Democracy Defense Project and saying, no, no, no, no, mail-in voting is working just fine.

It works fine in Wisconsin for Republican voters, for Democratic voters, for independent voters.

And so J.B.

Van Hollen and Mike Tate will be talking to Maggie Dawn about that coming up at five o'clock this afternoon on the Maggie Dawn Show.

In our Up North News newsletter that you can sign up for at UpNorthNewsWI.com, we've got a story there about Social Security and...

You know, we just talked about the push for privatization of our public schools.

Well, social security is no less threatened, especially when you have a Trump cabinet secretary talking about how these Trump baby bonds might be kind of a backdoor way to privatize social security.

Yeah, I actually said that out loud.

The last time a Republican president started to make moves toward privatizing social security.

That would be George W. Bush.

It cost him dearly in his own midterm elections and harmed his second term.

Because people know what they like.

They know that they like to work.

And when they're done working, they like to retire.

And they have paid into Social Security and the Medicare all their working lives.

What good does it do to work all your life, get to your old age and not be able to access the benefits that you've been paying for because you've got a group that A wants to just take care of billionaires and so they're going to take some of that money to pay for tax cuts and B wants to privatize it so that, you know, basically you're left to the whims of the casino we know is Wall Street.

And so in our newsletter today as an article from, you know, one.

one Wisconsin social security recipient talking about the importance of protecting social security in this day and age and not not monkeying with it.

So look for that article in our newsletter today and also we're going to talk to Melissa Baldoff in about a half hour here in our climate check about the lawsuit recently filed by several young people in Wisconsin.

filed by two nonprofit groups on their behalf, all about the climate.

And that if you have a state constitution like Wisconsin does in other states with language that is indicative of protecting the resources of the state for future generations, then maybe you should not have state laws that are specifically written to favor the fossil fuel industry.

as Republicans have wanted to do in Madison and in Washington DC as well.

So you can read more about that in our newsletter.

Head over to UpNorthNewsWI.com and click Subscribe in the top banner there.

On the text line from Jim and Brookfield, thank you, Pat, for getting up early to record the interview with Randy Winegarden of AFT.