You're listening to Civic Media.
You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.
Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime,
anywhere.
You're listening to Mornings with Pat Kratlow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake WSOTA studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Kratlow.
A very chilly Lake WSOTA right now.
wind whipping off the lake here.
Not white caps.
It's not exactly the gale warning that you'd find on the Great Lakes, but close enough.
Nice to have you back here up north on this Friday morning, September 5th, 2025 will tell you again the key word for the free ticket Friday chance to win.
brewers tickets to a game next weekend.
That'll be coming up.
Stick around for that.
Parker Olson is producing our fine program down in Madison Studio A2 and our Week in Review panel.
We'll be coming up very shortly.
Former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel, journalist Mark Jacob and Jennifer Schulze helped me review some of the headlines of the past few days.
But before that, let's go to meteorologist Brittany Merleau who's going to tell us more about
What do we call this?
Just a brutal
battle.
That's what today is.
I feel like you're battling those wins.
It's cutting right through you.
Yeah, temps.
Yeah, it's it's not pleasant.
The
couple of the neighbors, I can see smoke coming out of their chimneys.
And so they've fired up their wood stoves for the first time or their fireplaces.
And we've got a gas fireplace and that got fired up for the first time this morning.
It's just that kind of a morning for it.
Hopefully, hopefully just a couple of them before we have to come back to these, right?
Yes.
But the today is going to be one of the coolest days out there.
We're probably going to set record cold high temperatures once again.
Yesterday, records were broken, so the coldest high temperature ever on September 4th was met yesterday at Antigo, Green Bay, Manitowoc, Marshfield, Merrill, Oshkosh, Rhinelander, and Wausau as well.
And now this morning, when you step outside, wind chills, it's really feeling about 35 to 45 degrees across the state this morning.
Winds are whipping.
at 15 to 25 miles per hour sustained, and then they're gusting around 30 to 40 at times.
It is the breeziest right now into the Fox Valley and by Lake Michigan, of course, gale warning out there.
Big waves, mid-lake, and also over towards Michigan.
But as we go through the day today, we're going to stay mostly cloudy, especially north.
You're going to see chances for showers and drizzle still continuing, high as far north in the state, only in the low to mid-40s.
Meanwhile, down south in the state, we're going to see some more spots of sunshine, mixed skies out there, spotty sprinkles are possible still today.
And we're looking at highs only reaching those mid to maybe some upper fifties.
That's it.
So again, near record cold here today, tomorrow we'll get a little bit more mild into the mid fifties across the state.
A few scattered showers do want to spark now midday, unfortunately.
So those would be possible.
Nothing major, not a big, great event or anything.
And then as we go into Sunday, no chances of rain, all sunshine out there, low to mid-60s, and we only warm things up for Monday.
Everybody should hit about 70 degrees.
So we will get out of this.
There's light at the end of the tunnel here, but right now, like you said, the fire's going, layers, jacket weather.
And not just for ourselves.
Parents have to be cognizant earlier than usual of what the kids are wearing at the bus stop.
They do
and making sure and of course the kids will be like, mom, I don't need this.
You know, they get warm while they're running around at recess.
Like, no, still, you got to be bundled up to get out there.
So layers, layers, remember the layers.
Let's see.
Robin Tigerton says, good morning, cloudy 45 degrees, felt like 39, about a third of an inch of rain overnight.
I mowed four yards on Tigerton wearing a hoodie and a jacket and said he had spaghetti and meatballs last night at Blazers Bar and Grill.
spaghetti and meatball weather.
Yes.
Yes.
Sounds like that would work for us.
We were talking yesterday.
It's soup and chili weather, spaghetti and meatballs.
We're going for comfort food this weekend, I think, Brittany.
I agree.
And I was judging people what they were wearing yesterday.
I
was also in the with the jacket and I was like, who has layers?
I saw people with shorts on still
mixed
bag out there.
Go Wisconsin.
Oh, yeah.
And Rob says, by the way, look out for the road work on highway 29 if you're heading to the Packer game on Sunday.
Oh, yes.
Be aware.
It's because it is.
Oh, and Tony on YouTube, shepherd's pie weather.
Yes.
I
love shepherd's
pie so much.
I make such a good shepherd's pie in our cast iron skillet.
Oh,
I might I
might have to I might have to fire that up this weekend.
Sticker.
There's there's a spoiler alert.
What's Pat gonna make in the cast iron skillet this weekend?
Something because it's cast iron skillet weather.
That's that's the way we roll here.
Brittany, thank you.
We'll talk to you a little later.
Sounds good.
You remember, you can sign up for our daily newsletter, head to upnorthnewswi.com.
And let's see, we talked about one of the articles in there already.
And it's about all the different new foods that you can try at Lambeau Field.
If you're heading to a Packer game this season, like the
cheese-infused football-shaped chicken nugget, for example.
So that's part of today's newsletter coverage as well.
There's a story about a little ice cream shop in western Wisconsin that won a national award at the World Dairy Expo.
So learn more about how a little ice cream place up in Chateauque won such a prestigious honor.
And there's also a story there about Wisconsin and receiving FEMA aid because a lot of folks affected by those flash floods a couple of weeks back They're waiting to find out if they're going to get disaster relief or not, but They're gonna have to get in line There are 11 other states and tribal nations that have been waiting for their own declarations some dating back to July
because apparently the president approves disaster aid in batches and it's uncertain when he'll do that again.
My guess would be it's like whenever they think he's suddenly feeling charitable but that most days he would reject it if given given the opportunity because that's how we roll in this country now where we have to wait till the president is in a good mood.
before we get them to sign a disaster declaration.
So again, that's all part of our daily newsletter.
Sign up for it over at upnorthnewswi.com.
All right, I did say it was Free Ticket Friday, so here's the deal.
Get that Civic Media app, call up one of the stations, and then use the text feature to text us this hour's keyword or this morning's keyword till 9 a.m.
base, B-A-S-E, like first base, second base, third base, B-A-S-E base.
Text that before 9 a.m.
There will be other keywords throughout the course of the day, so keep listening across the Civic Media Radio Network so you have multiple chances to win.
Then one of those statewide entries will be drawn to win four club level seats to see the Brewers take on the St.
Louis Cardinals next week, Saturday, September 13th.
That's a Saturday evening game, 7.15 p.m.
So if you can get tickets electronically on your phone and use them at the stadium then put that app on your phone and text base BASE to us and you could be next to win All right headlines that we've been talking about this morning.
We already touched briefly on how one Milwaukee older woman Jocasta Zamorepa who is a former state legislator
has announced that she will be running for Secretary of State next year.
The current Secretary of State, Sarah Godluschi, is now going to be running for Lieutenant Governor.
Of course, several people are deciding whether to get into this race or that race.
And one that gets talked about the most is Tom Tiffany, the Congressman from up north in the Seventh Congressional District and former state senator as well.
And there has been
a lot of chatter about whether Tiffany will get into the race to run for governor, or if it's just an opportunity to raise his profile and raise some money and hold on to a pretty safe seat up in the 7th District.
Well, the headline in the journal Sentinel from Lawrence Andreas says, Considering a run for governor, Representative Tom Tiffany gets a cautious response from Donald Trump.
And the article starts with Tiffany apparently calling
Donald Trump after Tony Evers announced he would not seek a third term as governor next year.
And Tiffany told the Journal Sentinel we talked about it and is now saying he'll plan to launch a campaign by the end of September.
And Tiffany said that the purpose of the call was to set up the state of play in Wisconsin because the president, more than anyone, understands the importance of Wisconsin.
But Republican sources told the Journal Sentinel that Trump declined to endorse Tiffany's run for governor during the White House meeting.
But Tiffany said Trump didn't say anything like that to me.
He did say Trump's top concern during the discussion was maintaining a GOP majority in the House.
And Trump asking Tiffany about the status of the 7th District if Tiffany were to decide to run for governor instead.
It is exactly the kind of thing that has guided Trump on some other matters where cabinet appointments and other jobs have been pulled back in order to maintain the Republicans' razor-thin majority.
And as if that weren't enough, then in Texas, they're meddling with the maps and Missouri is about to do the same thing.
Trump knows that the only way...
that he can maintain this authoritarian control over the federal government is to have a Congress that has neutered itself, which is exactly what Tom Tiffany and Tony Weed and all the others have done.
Brian Stile and Glenn Grossman and Scott Fitzgerald and Derek Van Orden, of course, have all united behind Trump in refusing to assert congressional ability to provide oversight.
and transparency.
It's also why on the other side of the building the Senate has approved a cabinet officer nominations for people that they know are eminently not qualified.
And we're going to talk to our Week in Review panel about Robert Kennedy Jr.
and that absolute circus of a Senate hearing yesterday when he was grilled about his opposition to vaccine and to other
Notes of basic science and public health and the cuts that he supports to Medicaid that he like other Republicans continues to claim are not a cut at all None of this would be happening right now if we had some some folks in Congress on the Republican side Who would do the thing that they always say they're going to do and that is be independent minded still be conservative
but stand up for their district rather than for any one person.
And we've certainly seen that with presidents before where members of Congress on the Republican side would stand up to say a George W. Bush when he wanted to privatize social security and say, no, that's too much.
We can't do that.
But now we have a president who is cutting a trillion dollars from Medicaid, not to save money, but to simply pass it on to tax cuts for the very wealthy.
And there is no spinal fortitude among members of Congress to stand up for that, to stand up for the rounding up and disappearing of people on America's streets.
Even the recent attack on a boat coming from Venezuela that was purportedly filled with drug dealers and drugs, and that the US just blew out of the water, which I'm not sure how much people
know whether we're governed by the rule of law or the rule of Rambo, but people are typically put on trial if they're committing crimes.
This wasn't like some attack where terrorists were coming and they were going to land the boat and they were going to start shooting.
These are drug runners.
Yes, they're criminals.
What we do with criminals is we put them on trial.
We don't execute people on the spot.
You know who does that?
A police state.
you know, the kind of place that would put military troops on the streets of their own country in order to provide a show of force.
That's the kind of thing that I thought Republicans, Libertarians, and others would never stand for.
But it turns out they'll do that as long as it's Donald Trump.
And Donald Trump will go through any means possible to hold on to that slim majority in Congress, even
if it comes down to telling Tom Tiffany, well, that might be a safe district up north, but.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
Welcome back.
It is just about 7.23 on a Friday morning.
And yes, it appears
that I'm back.
For a moment there, I saw my screen kind of go black and I looked over at my router through spectrum and it was making a weird little light.
Now the lights are blue again, which is a good thing.
But spectrum and I were going to have a chat real quick here at Adam on YouTube, they're trying to silence you Pat, or something.
But we've had some interesting technical glitches on this Friday, not just here, but on YouTube as well.
So it's just a
It's just a funky kind of Friday.
It's also a free ticket Friday and you can win tickets to the Brewers game playing the Cardinals next Saturday, September 13th, 7, 15 p.m.
Texas Base BASE before 9 a.m.
on the Civic Media app and be part of the statewide drawing.
One entry is going to win those four club level seats.
Now before before I was so rudely interrupted by silence I was talking about an authoritarian president and the rule of law and how it should still mean something in this day and age so to talk about the rule of law We've got a former US attorney Jim Santel is here along with journalists Mark Jacob and Jennifer Scholesy and we'll get into all this with her We can review panel good to see all of you here and Jim It's it's not the story that is top of mind for most Americans and most Americans would say
Why would we defend, you know, drug runners, you know, trying to bring a boat full of drugs from Venezuela into the country?
I get all that.
But somebody's got to be the one to say, we're a rule of laws and we don't just bomb boats out of the water.
We tend to put people on trial.
If it's not something like, you know, an actual enemy invasion of the country.
Jim, am I wrong?
Is the rule of law...
being lost in all this or could this potentially just be a one and done situation?
We would hope it would be a one and done situation but I suspect it's probably not and Pat the concerns I think that all of us including many of you if not all of your listeners have about this being effectively an act of war on the seas is well taken.
People inside the Pentagon who plainly are not going to be
publicly speaking about this, have the same kinds of concerns, especially since Pat, when it comes to law enforcement, we've got another remedy, as we always do when we think about Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., domestic responses to a problem that's out there, which is drugs and movement on the high seas.
We get that completely.
How do we normally address those kinds of things when we've got that information?
It's called the United States Coast Guard, and what they typically do is they will interdict and they'll stop.
boats again on the high seas, for which we've got jurisdiction, and sees those drugs, and some even sees properties, those kinds of things.
That's the way that we do it in America.
That's the way that it's been done for years.
That's what the law prescribes.
It doesn't contemplate these kinds of, or this kind of bombing, which partakes again of wartime activities.
And once again, I see in this the same kind of thing, as I said, that we have seen in the overreaches, undeniably.
We've got another federal judge who just this past week said, Mr. President, you can't do in Los Angeles what you have done with the clearest, clearest language, Posse Comitatus Act, another overreach.
And it's just another instance, regrettably, of this president completely violating the law and doing it, apparently, with impunity, as you said.
the prior segment of Congress does not act at all.
No, Congress has been extremely compliant.
complicit, essentially.
And both Jennifer and Mark have talked about this from two different standpoints.
Jennifer has on her indistinct chatter, a column DC residents are flooding social media with critical reality checks on Trump's takeover scheme.
And Mark Jacob has a headline in Chicago, we do not submit.
Trump is trying to intimidate a city that refuses to be intimidated.
Mark, we'll start with you and talk a bit about your column and you know what how the city of Chicago view
use this potential invasion, if you will, by Trump rooted in absolutely nothing in regards to basic law enforcement.
Well, there's a new report that came out that this was the least violent summer in Chicago since 1965.
So I mean, crime is a problem in Chicago.
It's always been a problem.
It's a lot less of a problem now than it was in the 1990s.
I mean crime has steadily gone down in recent decades and you know people are trying to do things.
They're trying to you know their programs you know to find jobs for people and to teach young people to be less violent.
I mean there are real things going on in this city to try to stop this and you know Trump like putting
National Guard troops on the streets armed is not going to do it.
It might be a recipe for disaster, and it's not really fair to the National Guard.
I think people need to understand that he's not really addressing the problem.
He's just looking for an excuse to be an authoritarian, to put troops on the streets because he really hates cities that voted against him that are run by black mayors.
He hates that.
Yeah, and Jennifer in DC, you talk about, you know, the reality check there.
I've seen some of that as well.
Tell folks a bit more about what you're saying in your column.
Well, the thing that struck me about what was happening in DC on top of all of the other things about, you know, the troops being there in the first place was how the real story about it was coming through people's on the ground experience, filming and talking about
seeing these raids, the actual protests on how Washington residents were responding.
And I think, you know, it's like, it's almost citizen journalism that's telling a really good and accurate story about what's going on, where the national media is way up here saying crime crackdown.
People who live there are saying, hold on, this is what's going on.
Look at their 40 guards in my, you know, train station.
or at the mall and we don't need this and this is not appropriate.
Yeah, I mean basically just a show a force the actual arresting isn't being done by by national guard troops It's being done by federal law enforcement agents from you know DEA and homeland security because they have the power to make arrests and as the DC mayor said Hey, if you gave me 500 additional cops, we could have the same result But we're dealing with austerity budgets here from Republicans.
We'll talk more about this with our week in review panel Coming up in just a moment first reminder brewers are in Pittsburgh starting a series tonight pregame begins at five
On several stations across the Civic Media Radio Network, we'll hear from the Midwest Farm Report next.
I'm Pat Critello, live from Lake Wissota on the Civic Media Radio Network.
735 welcome back live from Lake Wissota, I'm Pat Critello and
Again, it's a free ticket Friday, our keyword this hour.
And until 9am is base B-A-S-E for the chance to win four tickets to see the Brewers against St.
Louis next Saturday, September 13th.
The Brewers are playing the Pirates for this weekend in Pittsburgh pregame tonight at 5 0 5.
And then while we're continuing with sports, there's some high school football games across the civic media radio network on various stations.
On Saturday, the Wisconsin Badgers take on Middle Tennessee.
Coverage begins at one o'clock on stations in Richland Center, Aymarie, Wisconsin Rapids, and Rippon.
And then you've got the Packers kicking off the NFL season against Detroit.
Coverage begins Sunday at 1pm on WRCO in Richland Center, WCQM in Park Falls, WRJN in Racine, and the newest Packers affiliate here on the Civic Media Radio Network, WAUH in Watoma.
plenty of opportunities.
And by the way, before I get back to our weekend review panel tonight's brewers game in Pittsburgh, you might really want to pay attention to if you don't normally listen on the radio.
Consider joining this evening starting at 505.
Why do I say that?
Because it's another one of those Apple TV games.
So if you head over to your usual fan dual sports network thing, you're not going to see the burrs tonight.
You have to have an Apple TV plus subscription.
And if you go to a bar restaurant and they don't have it, you're not going to see the game there either.
So consider yourself warned about that.
Back to our week and review panel here with journalist Mark Jacob and Jennifer Sholsey and former US Attorney Jim Santel.
And we were talking about the rule of law.
From a president that yeah, I know it should have a laugh track on it Which includes by the way a president who has now signed the executive order is about to sign it renaming the Defense Department as the Department of War Market it seems to just be one more You know reason to show that this guy is not about anything that's related to diplomacy
negotiations.
He's totally believing that if he goes with the authoritarian strongman route, that just enough people are going to reward him for that.
Yeah, I mean, to me, it's just one more play for insecure men, you know, that, oh, we're going to be big macho move, you know, we're going to call it in the Department of War.
And it's also like this, it's the make America great again thing.
It's the idea that before World War II was some sort of golden age.
I mean, I thought it was such a mature move to change the War Department to the Defense Department because it stated what the mission was.
And the mission was to defend our country.
It was it was national security.
It wasn't to go invade places and, you know, in steel territory and and but Trump seems to want to invade places in steel territory.
So, you know, this is just more of a declaration of that.
It's and it also it's just to me, it just it is just going to make every country in the world hate us.
I mean, it seems like everything Trump does is designed to make the United States into a pariah state.
And it's all about the labeling.
But Jennifer, unlike
you know, the Gulf of Mexico and demanding it be called the Gulf of America.
And yeah, again, some places went along with it.
Thankfully, I think a lot of Americans just kind of chortled at the whole notion of it.
But here it's the actual name change of a department.
And I know that where I still back working in newsrooms, my editors might not like it, but the department in my mind is suddenly going to get a longer name.
You know, the Department of War, more commonly known as the Department of Defense or something like that.
But I suppose for a lot of news consumers, they're just going to hear Department of War from now on.
is what
And he doesn't have the legal authority to change the name.
So really, what he's doing is giving it a nickname.
Now, he could go to Congress and Congress would probably go along with it, but it would require a law change to to actually change it.
And I know that that probably is not so meaningful to a lot of people, but it should be because it's part of a pattern with Trump.
He does things for marketing that he's not really legally allowed to do.
And everybody just kind of goes along with it at first blush and then it sticks.
And, you know, he names everything.
And frankly, the media goes along with his naming of everything.
Alligator Alcatraz is a perfect example.
You could have called it a detention center, but headlines everywhere said that I think rather a repulsive name.
The same thing here.
You don't have to call it the Department of War.
It's not technically that, but everybody will.
Yeah, well, it's like big, beautiful bill, which again, which they're
which now they're trying to change the name of
Well, again, because it's marketing.
And if the marketing isn't working, you change the label.
Jim Santel, I don't think it's going to be much longer till Department of Justice has some other kind of Department of Retribution.
Maybe
Absolutely.
You think about how you're going to change that granite, which is on 9th and Constitution there, and chisel out Justice Department and all the other good phrases about the rule of law and those kinds of things.
Jennifer's got it just right, of course.
that does require, I know this is so lawyer talking and yes, people roll their eyes, does require actions of Congress.
President notoriously said, well, I think they'll go along with it.
We just want to do this.
That's not the basis upon which we operate government in America.
Reminded, again, in kind of reverse way, George Orwell's 1984, remember the ministries labeled things that were just the opposite.
Ministry of Truth is actually the Ministry of Falsehood.
Peace is actually the Ministry of
of war, all those kinds of things.
Again, for purposes of telling the people, I guess, Oceania is the name of the country, and misleading them and giving them a sense that, well, we've got this under control now.
And as Mark just said, we're exercising our muscle in a way that should give you some sense of calm.
It is straight out of Orwell, and it is regrettably just the latest illegality from this president.
And the illegalities are being called out in some ways.
You hinted at one earlier about troop deployment in Los Angeles.
There was another court setback this week about Trump trying to kill funding for Harvard, where, again, a court saying you can't do that.
But like a lot of these others, is there a stay then on that?
And basically nothing changes while everything is appealed?
So this is Ellison Burroughs again.
She's in Boston.
We've heard from her before on this.
She's got an 84 page ruling in case you want to spend your morning or afternoon or during the.
a Packard game reading this opinion.
The reality is that it will be appealed.
Again, it will also go to the First Circuit.
They will affirm this, but at some point, again, stand in line.
All these things going to the Supreme Court, she's got some amazing language along the way, which again, Americans should take focus on.
She says, this important research which is being suspended is being done by virtue of arbitrary and capricious action.
And it should not happen.
She says, even if doing risk the wrath of a government committed to its agenda, no matter what the cost, those are strong, strong words from a federal district court judge.
And she is unequivocal about it.
She talks about sacrificing things on the altar of this government.
And again, it is not just good reading.
It is the law as of today.
It almost certainly will be subject to further review.
And we know what the Supreme Court has done in the past on these kinds of things.
My interest is to know what the Supreme Court is going to do.
And this is going to be the watershed, is what they do on tariffs.
If, in fact, they decide, yes, indeed, the Constitution does not grant exclusive authority to the Congress to work on tariffs, that's a line in not just the sand.
That's the quick drying cement.
And then we've gone over.
And then we've completely lost any sense of control.
Mark I feel like I can hear members of the audience saying stop buying into distraction There's a lot of distraction here that that there are things Donald Trump does not want to talk about wants to cover up obviously I'm referring to the Epstein files and a case where a lot of the Victims of this predator were on Capitol Hill this week to basically welcome Congress back and to say hey You guys left town leaving us hanging stop leaving us hanging even though
Speaker Mike Johnson is trying everything possible to protect somebody Who how did you put it in your tweet?
Why would somebody be fighting this hard to keep something hidden if it exonerated them,
I mean if he's clean in in these files, why is he trying so hard to me?
Actually, I thought of a second thing so one the possibilities are one that he's looks bad in the Epstein files and so he doesn't want him released
the other possibility is that he is using the Epstein files as blackmail and he doesn't want to lose that advantage.
So I mean you know either one is terrible and it's just amazing you know this party that
Wanted to you know drain the swamp and you know and expose all the predators is now Desperately desperately trying to prevent the release of the Epstein files, you know Trump is squeezing in members of Congress Mike Johnson is you know That's that's his main job right now is to cover up the Epstein files And I mean it's just it's such hypocrisy and you know and Trump was the one who like made this into an issue in the first place by
without any evidence accusing Bill Clinton of being involved in it.
And so, you know, I mean, but the thing about it is, Democrats and people, pro-democracy crowd, like me, I'm not a Democrat, but I'm part of the pro-democracy crowd.
And I just want decency.
I want the release of the files no matter who it hurts.
If it hurts a Democrat, fine.
I mean, if they're guilty, fine.
I don't care about, you know, party.
I care about decency and the Republicans ought to be the same way.
But Jennifer, and I don't say this to be cynical, but if there's one thing that Trump and his band have learned over the years is if you just hold tight, America's attention span will move on to something else.
And I'm quite certain that Epstein's victims are aware of this and are going to try whatever they can to keep media attention.
on this case, but again, not to be cynical, but that's going to be a bit of a challenge.
I mean, just look at the news conference the other day, although I will note that if you had a monitor where you could see all of the TV networks, you wouldn't have noticed that some were not carrying it or did not carry much of it.
including News Nation, which I've long said is aspiring to be like Fox.
And Fox took a little bit of it and then was gone while other networks stayed with it completely.
So I think they have a story that has hooked America.
rightfully so.
And I think that it will continue.
And I also don't agree with this idea that there's distractions.
It's all part of the same thing.
Everything that's happening with Trump is all part of this authoritarian march.
And I think we should talk about all of it.
And I don't think we should minimize things by saying, well, that's a distraction.
And so let's not talk.
Let's talk about this.
Let's talk about all of it.
It's all a big, darn, darn mess.
It is.
But, you know, I can say from personal experience, in multiple areas, there are people saying, well, you can't focus all the time on Trump and all the bad things going on because people will just tune out.
It's a balancing act that we've talked about on this program repeatedly, is that if you dwell on everything for too long, people want to turn their attention elsewhere, even if it is a five-alarm fire.
Mark that's that's burning down the house.
It's you know, it's the ongoing tightrope.
I got about 30 seconds still break if you want to talk a bit about trying to keep keep the news media's focus.
The right wing has done this for a very long time.
If you say something enough time, people are going to believe it.
And so I think maybe some people who are on the side of decency are going to keep on saying the word Epstein and people are going to keep on remembering.
Well, and again, I think that you've got in this case, victims who are
not going to simply let this go.
They have fought for this long.
And they're now saying they'll compile their own list and do what they have to do with it.
Our Week in Review panel consists of former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel and journalist Mark Jacob and Jennifer Schulze.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Mike Clemens gives us an update on the Packers season opener against Detroit coming up in our next hour, along with Dr. Kristen Lierly.
Stay tuned.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
For Free Ticket Friday, if you want to be entered for four tickets to see the birds versus the cardinals next Saturday,
the word between now and 9am is base B A S E text that to us using the civic media app.
A few minutes more with our weekend review panel, former US Attorney Jim Santel, journalist Mark Jacob and Jennifer Schulze.
And let's start with the the breaking news here that the new jobless numbers are out.
And as we discussed with Sean O'Malley yesterday, the past few months have been weak to put it mildly.
Mark, these new numbers are weak to put it
Strongly, 22,000 jobs in
Yeah, only 22,000.
They thought there'd be a lot more and the jobless rate popped up to 4.3%, which is highest it's been since 2021.
And also they revised previous months, which they do based on collecting more data.
This is normal if they revise it, but they revised both of the previous two months down.
In fact, it now shows that the U.S.
lost jobs in June.
And yet, Jennifer, for you recall that a month ago when Trump didn't like the numbers, suddenly the person reporting the numbers was fired.
And so when you look at these bad numbers, you were saying a member of the Trump administration is already promising further evidence to fuel those concerns that future numbers will not be credible.
Right the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was on CNBC just a little while ago before the numbers came out and Promising that the numbers would get better because they were going to ferret out people who had vendettas against Donald Trump and a reminder to everybody The BLM is considered, you know
a very credible organization filled with math nerds.
These are not people who are actively campaigning against one president or another.
They're just collecting data and doing their jobs.
Trump wants you to think something else about this agency, but the truth is it's a bunch of very serious people who are just collecting data and sharing it with the rest of us.
And by the way, this is a guy who pledged to bring back manufacturing.
Manufacturing shed another 12,000 jobs.
Manufacturing is in a world of hurt right now, including the uncertainty of the ongoing trade war.
And then government employees overall, since the beginning of the year, the federal government has shed 97,000 jobs.
And Jim Santel, if folks think that won't make a difference, think again, in everything from our national parks to our courthouses,
There's a lot of support staff that's not there anymore.
I know it may be popular to take shots at government employees, my own sense, having spent about three decades inside the Department of Justice and the Department of State and other places, is that, believe it or not, when it comes to these basic core functions of government, not to say that there cannot be revisions and amendments in workforces, but it's incredibly skeletal.
And when you think even about the groups, for example, the Civil Rights Division, Federal Programs Branch, other folks inside the Department of Justice have been decimated.
recently.
It's not a large group to begin with and the notion that you're going to simply wipe these people out and it really stops the function of government in ways that we anticipate government functioning and what you do then of course is you replace it with people who are just sided with you in terms of a
Entirely new mission, for example, civil rights division, no longer enforcing civil rights, but going after those people who would pretend to do things like voting rights and ensuring those access to everything from residential facilities, all kinds of things, turning things on their head.
when you replace the people who are gone with people who are simply allegiant to you for no readily apparent reason other than political alliances.
And just set aside that whole notion of government and ideology, you're talking 97,000 souls who are now unemployed.
And it doesn't really do much to help the economy there.
These are people who know what they're doing and they're out there without jobs.
We are diminished by the fact that they're, you know, I'm not going to say what their next job will be.
Hopefully they'll find ways to become gainfully employed.
But this is a huge, huge,
brain drain, it is a loss of expertise, and we are lessened because of it.
Well, look what we're putting in its place, Mark.
And by that, I'm referring to Robert Kennedy Jr.
And that shall we say interesting congressional hearing yesterday where, you know, he he stuck to his guns, if you will, and it was very combative.
And it made for I suppose it made for good TV.
But it really did underscore, you know, what a precarious position national public health is in this country based on that Q&A.
Yeah, I mean it's so dangerous I mean there's really no question the vaccines have saved many many lives and yet he's gone to war against vaccines and and In that hearing yesterday, I mean he just lied over and over again and I kind of wish that they had it set up as some good TV journalists do now where You have the video queued up and as soon as he lies you just show him his past statement
because he kept on denying stuff that he really said and saying he never said that oh i never said that you're making it up no he really said things i mean he's he's really he's a pathological liar he's a he's a disturbed person and trump put has put him in charge of the america's health it's just shocking and a real interesting little event in that hearing was that the democrats wanted him sworn in i mean yet generally if you testify in front of congress
you are in effect sworn in you if you lie to congress you can be prosecuted so you don't necessarily have to go through the process of swearing someone in but the democrats ask that he be sworn in he's such a liar and the republicans refused
That's Mark Jacob.
You can catch his column, Stop the Presses at stopthepresses.news.
Jennifer Schulze has Indistinct Chatter.
Go to Substack and look for Indistinct Chatter or at news Jennifer.
And of course, Amicus, a law review with Jim Santel can be heard on Saturday mornings at nine o'clock, replayed on Sunday on Civic Media stations all around Wisconsin.
You can learn more at civicmedia.us.
And you can also find a link to what Mark does through Courier Newsroom, parent company to Up North News.
We had enough to go on that I didn't get to do much chit chat.
I hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend I trust you did have a good weekend here, and we'll talk again next week.
Hi everybody
Thanks to all of you for joining us today.
And again, one more reminder that our keyword for Free Ticket Friday is base.
B-A-S-E.
You've got till nine o'clock to text that in for the drawing for four tickets to see the Brewers vs. St.
Louis next Saturday.
Again, use the Civic Media app.
Dr. Kristen Lierly is standing by and then Mike Clemens as well in our eight o'clock hour live from Lake Wissota on the Civic Media radio network.
The national news cycle never stops, but it can be hard to find news about your local community.
Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.
With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.
Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.
