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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Wessota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
Hey, good morning.
It is 7 0 6.
Nice to have you back here in Madison, not the Lake Wessota studios.
I guess we could call them.
Well, Parker Olsen's here with me as well.
Is it the Lake Manona studio, the Lake Mendota studio?
I mean, we're on the Isthmus
is technically closer
don't know.
We could say the Isma Studios, but then the newspaper people
Okay, from our Lake Mendota Studios, welcome to Studio A2.
Brittany Merleau, meteorologist is here as well to talk about the weather, but first Brittany, can you, can you believe we're in the same room?
Parker and I
can't even believe it.
It doesn't look like it.
Right.
I'm
jealous.
I know.
It's quite, quite, quite the party here.
See, I'm over here.
Turn his camera on his, uh, the camera that you got out of a cracker jack box or something like that, where it always looks like Parker has jaundice or something.
And meanwhile,
Both Luke Mathers and Todd Alba.
Apparently I badgered them a lot about the video quality coming out of this place.
I know it's a radio show, but if you're if you're gonna stream video, you know
Right.
You should put, you should
put a
little effort behind it.
They put a lot of effort behind it.
I mean, this thing is so Vegas looking behind me.
I am waiting for a cocktail.
John or Gordy should be dressed up as a cocktail waitress and offered to serve me something before I go watch Dean Martin and Don Rickles perform in the lounge down here.
This, this is a wild setup.
It is
very bright.
It is very bright.
I am very complimented and.
Uh, more than a little intimidated at, you know, what they, what they're able to pull off when you just say, Hey, can we just not have a blank wall behind me?
Like, all right, Crichtlow, how about this?
A little bit of overkill, but I like it.
Hey, coming up in just a moment, we haven't forgotten.
It's our go for the green and gold text to win contest.
That keyword is coming up shortly, but we've kept Brittany waiting long enough.
So y'all keep waiting for that keyword.
It is coming.
But first, uh, Brittany, as I was driving down yesterday.
from Chippewa Falls and it timed out perfectly.
I got in the Jeep right when the Brewer game was starting because they had afternoon baseball and got here just as it was over.
It was such a gorgeous sunny drive.
We don't have the fall colors thing going yet, but I really could not argue whether wise with what we had how much of that carries over into today and beyond.
Oh, so much of it.
We have a beautiful forecast.
Once we get through this fog, a lot of thick fog scattered throughout the state this morning, dense in places, less than a mile visibility.
So if you still have somewhere to go, still trying to get to work, leave early, drive slow.
be safe out there.
It is pretty thick in spots that will lift by nine o'clock this morning.
That dense fog advisory from Ashland to Green Bay and of course north and east of that area.
The rest of the state, though, just patchy spots of it, especially in those low lying river areas.
Otherwise a bright and beautiful day, mostly sunny.
Once again, highs in the low to mid seventies.
A few of us will hit some upper seventies today and then we push repeat for tomorrow.
We get even warmer into the weekend where down south you're going to be hitting 80 degrees up north.
upper 70s.
We hold that trend for the entire weekend into next week.
I was trying to find rain in the forecast.
It doesn't look like it's going to be here until next weekend.
So we've got a long dry stretch of a ton of sunshine.
Gorgeous.
So the top might come down off the Jeep for a time.
Yeah, for a
week straight, you can pull it off
that.
I'm gonna do it.
All right.
Well, good.
That's good to know.
From Robbie says, good morning from Tigerton.
It is foggy and 52 degrees.
The visibility in Tigerton is a mile.
So Pat's Chippewa Valley fog that they've had the last few mornings, made it to Tigerton today.
I'm not sure fog commutes like that, but I get
movies, you know, the blob.
Let's see, Rob mowed five yards in the Tigerton and Wittenberg areas yesterday.
The weather was beautiful.
Today he's got five lawns to mow, so he's going to be busy.
Yesterday had a cheeseburger lunch at Rachel's Roadside.
Pat Brittany and everyone out there, you have to stop at Rachel's Roadside in Wittenberg for their great food.
Well, that's awfully nice.
Tony commenting on the background here says the natural light in Pat's home office can't be matched.
That's true.
That's the one.
thing I got going.
But then he goes on to say, if we're talking backgrounds, I'm still missing behind Parker, the dear leader portrait of the handsome and capable Luke Mathers.
We did talk about that.
the portrait of Luke looking over your shoulder?
We could do that.
Actually, what I'd like to do, but it might come off mean, so I'm going to go ahead and spoil it right now.
Oh boy.
We come out to a three shot like this sometime and you've got a portrait of Luke over your shoulder and there's one over my shoulder and there's one over Brittany's shoulder.
It's just completely has that dear leader look to it.
Oh, that would be.
It
all be in good fun, Mr. Mathers.
I want to make sure that I emphasize that.
Oh, he says no, period.
okay.
Luke.
Dang it.
That's why he's the boss.
Brittany, thank you so much.
We'll talk to you in the next hour.
Sounds good.
All right.
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Really worth taking a peek at.
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I guess it's time for a keyword here.
I've kept
long enough over
good.
All right.
It is time.
Look at that little
but.
Time for the day's first round of the go for the green and gold text to win contest.
Green and gold.
You can get cash and jewelry.
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Look up one of the stations.
Use the text button for this 7 a.m.
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All right, here's this hour's keyword to text us before 8 a.m.
Fall, not autumn, it's fall, F-A-L-L.
The word is fall, y'all, F-A-L-L.
Your next chance to enter will be during the nine o'clock hour of Matt and Air on Air with Jane Matt and Erin Gregg Bach.
So,
Go for the green and gold before eight o'clock today and send us the keyword fall.
There.
How simple was that?
Parker, we've, we've had, uh, we've had non-perfect shows, right?
had days where we
quickly, but, uh, you know, we've, we've had our rough patches.
We've had a hiccup or so.
Have, have we ever caused 10,000 gallons of wastewater to be dumped into Lake Michigan?
metaphorically, perhaps, but not quite literally.
The story from Caitlin Luby and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel employee error causes wastewater overflow that dumped 10,000 gallons into Lake Michigan.
Apparently it happened during a shift change.
not sure where the miscommunication occurred, but an employee observed wastewater overtopping the emergency overflow structure at their south shore facility on September 23rd.
Let's see what the overflow lasted about 30 minutes.
And there is potential for human exposure through recreational use of the waterway.
Apparently too much water came through a gate when it shouldn't have an untreated wastewater overtopped an emergency barrier there.
Corrective actions were taken as soon as it was discovered.
Oops.
Whoops.
in essence, I mean, every, every job has those things that you could do.
That to me is a pretty big one.
That's on on par with like Homer Simpson working at a nuclear power plant, you know and hitting a particular button.
So it raises this question.
Oh boy What have you done?
What have I done?
I'm talking to the listeners.
Oh, yeah, what what have you
there Tell us a story about something that you've done
Uh, or, or a coworker, but you got to, you know, protect people.
We're not, we're not here to slander people or get them in trouble.
So you got to be nice about it.
And I, mine isn't anywhere on the, on par with, you know, 10,000 gallons of wastewater, but in this business, it is very possible to say the wrong thing and to have to then apologize on air.
And I did that once in my first radio job out of college where somebody told me a story about something that had happened to their car in a car wash.
And it was a funny story.
I'm not even going to bore you with the details, but it seemed funny.
But I thought, well, you know, I'll try to make it as generic as possible.
Well, needless to say, the owner of the local car wash heard the story and, you know, construed it in a way that all the listeners would know that it was the local car wash, despite my attempts to say otherwise.
And.
I got to say that's the only time I've truly cheesed off a sponsor and got read the riot act.
And I mean, truly read the riot act and having to apologize on near the next day.
Now there are a lot worse things that can happen in this business.
There's naughty words and there's, you know, slander and getting your facts wrong and all of that.
So I feel, I feel very fortunate that way.
But, you know, again, it's not 10,000 gallons of sewage.
So, uh, and we can't even ask you.
Mr. Parker to make a confession because I mean this is this is kind of early in your career and
you you can't try to
were.
Wait, you told me there were like super issues, you know, where you put like the wrong word on screen or something like that.
I don't
how big are those FCC fines again?
Well, yeah, that's why we.
not talk about
let's see.
Alicia Navy Vets says she was on the flight deck 2005 moving jets.
I was in the cockpit.
The yellow shirt on the deck.
pulled an ordinance pin that had flares attached, arming the flares near the tail hook almost took out two sailors working on the tail hook.
Yeah.
See, that's, that's a story right there.
That's worse than anything
done.
Uh, yeah.
Again, uh, haven't taken out sailors haven't.
blown up a plane, anything like that.
Tony reminds us that Parker's still on probation, isn't he?
He can't really incriminate.
background
confidential.
I know, but everybody knows you're still relatively...
relatively new here.
So remind me of this next week when, when John and Gordy are on, cause John and Gordy have been involved in
broadcasting
for something like 78 years.
And I'm sure that they've got some stories to tell as well.
So we'll look forward to that.
Anyway, and you can continue to just share your stories, either get in the comment sections of Facebook or YouTube for either up North news or for civic media or use of the civic media app or
best of all, if you're able to get over to the Civic Media app and use the voice note feature and tell us the story.
I'd love to get more people using that, that voice note feature and tell us what happened.
Now, obviously we'll have to make
sure that
there, there isn't anything slander, libelists, anything like that, but.
Tell us a story about a big time goof at work.
We'd love to hear that.
Coming up, we're going to be talking to State Democratic Party Chair Devin Remaker about a very busy 2026 campaign season that is already underway.
We're part of America's Up North, wherever we are in Wisconsin, including here in Madison, live.
I'm Pat Critello.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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And welcome back, it is just about 7.23 on this Thursday morning, September 25th, 9.25, 20.25 and we're here in Madison studio.
A2 and state party chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin Devin Remaker will be along in just a minute.
A reminder that the key word is fall for the go for the green and gold text to win contest.
Use that civic media app and text the word fall FALL before eight o'clock this morning and you will be in the running for a daily prize and also for that grand prize of tickets to see a Minnesota Green Bay football game in Green Bay coming up.
in November.
All right, there was another case of political violence in America yesterday in what is becoming a chilling sign of the times.
It happened at an ICE facility in Dallas, which led to both a death and injuries from gunfire.
The gunman then died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
But I mean, even before anybody
knew anything with certainty about the circumstances.
You had political figures, including the vice president of the United States, jumping to conclusions about who or what provoked this kind of violence, and you had the president and others singling out the Democratic Party.
saying that that is, you know, that is where the nation's ire should be directed.
Which is, how do I put it, grotesquely reckless to first off be jumping to conclusions at all because I thought
These were folks that are very much pro law enforcement and let law enforcement do their investigation, but it has not been stopping people.
I mean, go back to the assassination of Melissa Hortman, the longtime Minnesota House of Representatives speaker when she and her husband were murdered.
Another legislator and spouse were shot and wounded and.
You know, again, you had people who were mocking Governor Tim Walz at the time, making, again, a very loose association to the alleged shooter in this case.
There is just this degree of recklessness or sloppiness, whatever it is that you want to call it, I call it political expediency, political abuse, to want to immediately use political violence for
political purposes and to not focus about bringing everybody together and saying that, you know, violence is wrong in any instance, especially political violence when talking about this case.
When you have a group that is singling out a political party and therefore the elected officials and candidates and associating them with violence, again, you're, you're only.
urging some of your more extreme followers onto violence themselves.
And that just should never be accepted in this country in any way, shape, or form.
Well, of course, J.D.
Vance, the vice president, after having already jumped to conclusions, ended up getting into a social media spat with a few different folks on the left, some prominent figures there, which again gets back to this notion, whether it's J.D.
Vance or Derek Van Orden.
Don't you have a job?
Don't you have something better to do than to first off, even try to be the first to put something
on Twitter, I guess it's because you see yourself as wanting to frame a message.
You want that frame in there before, you know, the facts get in the way.
Think of it like the Mueller report, which did in fact draw connections between Russian involvement that benefited the Trump campaign in 2016, but
Bill Barr, Trump's attorney general at the time, of course, first kind of kept the report under wraps and then gave his spin on it, saying it completely exonerated the Trump campaign when it did nothing of the sort.
But the framing was already there and there are people that still believe it to this day.
And so to this day, there will be people that believe JD Vance and President Trump and others in saying that this was some kind of a, you know, a
Democratic Party operative that was involved in this shooting at this ICE facility in Dallas.
It would be a lot like claiming when, say, Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband was attacked that you would have people saying that this was a, you know, a Republican Party job all the way.
I would have really preferred back at that point if Republican politicians had been more widespread in condemning the attack.
And instead, what followed was mockery and, I mean, just morbid humor about the attack, which again, if you don't want to condemn the violence, that's your business.
But when you end up making light of it, that is tacit encouragement to others to continue the cycle.
We need to talk about the ways that some of these folks have
easy access to guns.
There are red flag laws that should be applied in these instances, and there should be every possible effort to bring down the temperature in the room.
And instead, by politicians getting on social media right away, or by politicians like Derek Van Orden spending days and days afterwards continuing to try to make political hay out of an act of violence.
They're doing nothing to lower the temperature of the discourse out there.
And again, this isn't a partisan matter.
It's not like somebody should be calling on the entire Republican Party, but we should be calling on every conservative elected official or figure out there to say that we should be able to do better than this, to condemn violence in all of its forms, even if you think they were motivated by your side of the spectrum.
Your view of them should be basically, get off my team.
because that's not what we do.
We have to win based on our ideas, based on the things that we can do, not the violence that we can continue to perpetuate across this country.
When we come back, we will talk to State Democratic Party Chair, Devin Remaker.
We'll talk about Tom Tiffany's entry onto the Republican side of the governor's race and the many primaries shaping up in 2026.
I'm Pat Rightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Coming to you live on this Thursday from Madison Studio A2.
I'm Pat Critewell, Parker Olson here producing.
We'll talk to Devon Remaker, State Democratic Party Chair in just a sec.
First a reminder that the go for the green and gold text to win contest is going on as it does every morning in the seven o'clock hour this week and next week.
So you have until eight o'clock to text us the keyword fall, F-A-L-L.
before eight o'clock, then there will be more chances throughout the day to text keywords in.
And so you can get multiple entries for the daily prize, which is some cash and some jewelry and the grand prize, which is some very coveted football tickets.
So fall FALL is what you want to text before eight o'clock.
All right, we've talked about a couple of political matters today, obviously already, not just the political violence in Dallas from yesterday that I mentioned in our previous segment, but the entry of Congressman Tom Tiffany into the governor's race, his attempt to shift his stance on abortion, and also the fact that 2026 is going to be one busy year, not just the general election, but there will be primaries in
many districts, congressional districts, legislative districts, governor and more.
So it's a lot of plates to keep spinning if you're the state party chair.
And yet Devin Rummicker signed up for the gig.
And so here he is joining us now.
Devin, it's nice to have you here.
Thanks for joining us this morning.
Thanks for
having me, Pat.
Appreciate
it.
Let's start first with an overview.
You succeeded Ben Wickler.
Well, not that terribly long ago.
So what do you think of the job so far?
This is your chance to say,
my God, what have I done?
Get me out of here.
Well, I'm really enjoying it.
Thankfully, having worked with Ben and even chair Martha Lanning before I very much knew what I was signing up for.
It's obviously been an
action-packed first three months on the job starting July 1st between the state budget, the federal budget.
The governor's announced that he's on seeking reelection
and
are growing crop of fantastic nominees for governor and offices all around the state.
So I'm just really excited to be able to keep up the fight.
Proud to have continued our success on many fronts, including beating the state Republican Party three to one on the latest finance report in
August.
There you go.
See, there's plenty of enthusiasm already as seen, not just in those
contributions, but in candidates as well.
So we will get to that, but I think we'll probably go in order of how I introduce the segment here.
So let's start with the political violence of Dallas and of course other recent events as well.
And in my mind, from a Wisconsin standpoint, you can't talk about the reaction to political violence without talking about the
shall we say, emotionally supercharged and threatening tweets from Congressman Derek Van Orden.
But then you had, you know, responses from the president and vice president of the United States yesterday.
And so I'd kind of like to start with your own reaction to what you believe political figures from both parties ought to be saying when we have episodes of political violence like this in our country.
So, when the trashing shooting of Charlie Kirk happened, I spoke out very quickly and clearly, calling for folks to turn down the rhetoric and the temperature.
I genuinely believe that political violence has no place in our dialogue and in our political system.
Unfortunately, what we have seen are folks like Derek Van Orden fanning the flames with very, very inflammatory rhetoric.
I mean, I think he was up to over 700 tweets doing everything from calling for basically another civil war to threaten you to take away funding from the Mayo Clinic and the city of Eau Claire and Ellsworth within his own district along with hospital networks.
absolutely deranged what he is doing.
You know, even yesterday he was threatening to hold the Wisconsin Democratic Party legally accountable.
And we have Vice President JD Vance basically telling
at least half of the country's population that they can go straight to hell.
It is really sad.
It is really unfortunate.
And I think that we have the opportunity to turn the page on this divisive rhetoric, this inflammatory rhetoric in 2026.
And I'm looking forward to the opportunity to do that.
Now, you know, Jimmy Kimmel is not the most important political figure today, but his return to TV yesterday,
Told me or the day before I should say told me that there there may be a turn that's being made a pivot in terms of
the recognition of ordinary Americans that, yeah, they're used to political back and forth, but there's something in this particular case about, you know, taking a talk show host off the air for things that he said.
There were plenty of conservatives that came to Jimmy Kimmel's defense as well.
I wonder if you sense that in the general public or is this kind of a one off and it'll quickly be forgotten until the next time Donald Trump and his FCC chair and others try to restrict people.
First Amendment rights.
I don't think it will be easily forgotten.
I think this was a wake-up call for a lot of people.
The silencing of free speech by conservatives was really pushed in the last few weeks and it really culminated with the taking off the air of Jimmy Kimmel.
I think that when folks are trying to stop
people from speaking out.
That is the time to speak louder than before.
I think a lot of people heard that loud and clear.
And it also laid bare a lot of the Republican hypocrisy on this issue.
I mean, I almost feel bad for some of the folks to have to clean up for Donald Trump sometimes, but they were spending weeks or a week rather saying that, you know, this was a business decision that he, you know, the government had nothing to do with it.
And then Donald Trump just goes out and tweets that, you know, he's going to take another run at ABC to try to get Kim
off the air.
I mean, it's very clear what he's doing.
He's weaponizing the federal government to silence his dissent and to silence critics in his political opposition.
And I think that that is a very stark and important moment for our country to take note of.
I certainly don't think this is going to be the last time we see something like that out of the administration, and it makes our fight back all the more important.
We're talking to Devin Remacher.
He's the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
And there are already multiple Democratic candidates running for governor.
But we're going to start on the Republican side where they now have their first marquee name.
Perhaps only their only one.
I don't know who will potentially come in and run for governor on the Republican side.
But Congressman Tom Tiffany is is a big name.
But what's your assessment of him as a potential nominee when defending the governor's race next year?
Well, whether it's supporting the GOPs and Donald Trump's tariffs, taxes on working-class Wisconsinites, taking away health care from working-class Wisconsinites, he's
been in
lockstep with the administration every step of the way.
And I think Tom Tiffany is somebody who we look at as just another stooge, a mogul loyalist that is going to put Washington DC and Donald Trump before...
Washington County and the rest of Wisconsin.
And at the end of the day, I'm really looking forward to making sure every single Wisconsinite knows his track record.
We're able to hold him accountable.
I think he's going to try to moderate himself as we always see Republicans do in these races and we're not going to get away with it.
We're going to make sure everyone knows Tariff Tom's real record of devastating working class Wisconsinites.
And one of those examples that I think folks noticed pretty quickly deals with women's reproductive health rights where, you know, he has sponsored
bills that would amount to total abortion bans, but is currently using some interesting verbal gymnastics to talk about, you know, supporting and maintaining the state's current 20 week law.
But much like Scott Walker with Act 10 and with union busting laws, much like
I don't know, Supreme Court Justices and Roe v. Wade, there seems to me to be kind of a trustworthy factor when it comes to Tom Tiffany trying to pretend that he would not push for a six-week or total abortion ban if he were to get elected.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
I mean, it is, we have seen time and time again that Republicans say one thing to get elected and do another.
They consistently betray their constituents and the promises that they make on the campaign trail, whether it
whether it's one of the examples you just gave, whether it was Scott Walker kind of putting out an ad that indicated he was, he was a little bit more friendly on choice and then immediately moving into abortion ban.
Once again in the state of Wisconsin, when he was elected, you know, the core of it is that Tom Tiffany supported a six week abortion ban during his time in Congress.
He supported the bans that Republican tried to move when he was in the state legislature.
And we have also seen him help support Donald Trump's betrayal of his promises in the Republican party's promise.
in 2024, they said they weren't going to touch people's Medicare, that they were going to stay away from Social Security.
And we saw in the wake of the last budget being passed, that Trump officials commented that this is a backdoor for them to privatize Social Security.
You simply cannot trust these individuals.
And you can't trust them, Tom, might end up right alongside Toxic Tom and Tariff Tom, because it is a common theme.
We're talking to Devin Remacher.
He's the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
The Democratic Party attracting a lot of candidates already for governor.
That's not unexpected, but also multiple candidates in a couple of congressional districts, the third district in Western Wisconsin, the eighth district in Northeast Wisconsin.
And now there are multiple Democrats running in some legislative races that have announced already.
So Devin, you've worked with the party for many years.
You're the new chair, but you've seen more than your share primaries.
What's your overview of not just the role of the state party, but frankly, there are a lot of county parties out there that, you know, the people kind of come and go in leadership positions.
So what is it that you want people to know about how state and county parties treat primaries as we head into a very busy season before August of next year?
Absolutely.
So.
Primaries, from my personal perspective, and what I bring into the role at the party is that they're a healthy process.
They are a way for candidates to be able to share their vision, ideas, and for the party to align around what our future is and what we're looking for out of the next generation of leadership.
And I think right now, and when there's a lot of folks that are trying to figure out what that looks like.
for the Democratic Party, both in Wisconsin and across the country.
I think this is a really important process.
I think what doesn't help the process is the party having its thumb on the scale.
So the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, our county parties, our congressional district parties, all of our other units, we're going to be neutral in the governor's race, in congressional district primaries, in state legislative primaries.
And I think that's really important.
One of the courts of Wisconsin is that we have a very late primary.
It's going to be on August 11th next year, which gives us 84 days between the primary and the general election.
And what we can have are folks that have.
hurt feelings because a thumb was on the scale or they feel like they didn't get a fair shake.
I think an important part to having that process play out is making sure that folks do get that fair shake and the fair process and the party isn't favoring one person or the other because we all have to come together within that 84-day window to go toward success.
And we can't do that if we're working through hurt feelings.
I've got about a minute left just to ask you in terms of the governor's race that the state Democratic Party is already thinking about how best to assist whoever the nominee turns out to be during those 84 days.
What is it that you're doing to help ensure a strong nominee?
Yeah, I'm really excited.
We're partnering with the
outgoing governor Tony Evers to have the governor readiness project, which is a all hands on deck effort to make sure that although we are neutral in these primaries, we're not just sitting on our hands until the primary is over.
We're going to be focusing on holding the Republicans accountable and making sure that whoever our nominee is on election night on August 11th, they have the team, the resources and an already weakened opponent so that we can maximize those 84 days.
It is going to be unprecedented in scope and scale.
and I am really excited to be able to, you know, spend our time focusing on holding Tariff Tom accountable for devastating working Wisconsin families all the way in the run up till August 11th.
State Democratic Party Chair Devon Remaker, it is great for you to take some time this morning to talk with us, give us a campaign update.
We'll visit again soon.
Have a great day.
Thank you very much, Pat.
Appreciate it.
Yep.
Thank you so much.
One more reminder before we head to break that we have our go for the green and gold text to win contest.
And again, you only have until eight o'clock to text us the word fall.
F A L L. There will be more chances to win starting in the nine AM hour, Matt Nair on air with Jane Matt Nair and Greg Bach and then more chances beyond that to win a daily prize and a grand prize of football tickets to one of the biggest games of the season.
I'm Pat Krightlo, this is the Civic Media Radio Network, Joseph Pecky,
in our next hour.
Those of you tuning in and going, hey, it's time for Todd all those weekly visit.
We moved it.
And for good reason.
We've got a little bit more consistency in talking to the folks from the newsroom here at Civic Media.
And so in this segment on Mondays and Wednesdays, you've been seeing Jimmy Koska talking about things in Southwest Wisconsin that he's following and sports.
And so on Tuesdays and Thursdays in this block, we will be talking to James Kelly from our newsroom in Chippewa Falls, stories that he's following in Western and Northwest Wisconsin.
James, how are you?
I'm good.
You didn't tell me I was taking Todd's spot.
Now I really have
to live up to the hype.
No, please don't.
I don't want to hear that you just got out of the shower.
I don't want to hear all the things that can get us in trouble with the FCC.
I'll push that for an hour.
We only need one, Todd Alba.
I'll keep it to myself.
Including, by the way, we did a story an hour ago.
Parker pitched it.
It was a teacher's assistant who got into some kind of trouble.
But the original note said, uh, TA gets into trouble, blah, blah, blah.
I was convinced it was a Todd Alba story.
I'm like, what did he do this time?
I didn't think of that.
Yeah, I did.
That's for sure.
Anyway, so we'll have Todd coming up next.
Folks watching on social media are like, hey, why do you keep putting the Brewer's banner up there?
Because we have Brewer's Baseball tomorrow, the final homestand with Cincinnati of the regular season.
Coverage begins tomorrow at 6.35.
There, now I can take that down and just focus on what James is covering.
Something that we talked about on the show.
already this week, but is definitely noteworthy.
Data center is being a hot topic around the state, the pros and the cons, and frankly, the things that we still don't know about them.
And monomony is where we have one of those proposals as well, or at least I guess we use past tense now.
We had one of those proposals.
Yeah, it was a very short-lived proposal for the Menominee data center.
It would have been in the town of Red Cedar.
In August, the city annexed and rezoned a portion of that land.
I believe we talked about it then, which led to a lot of community pushback.
People are unsure about the data center.
They have environmental concerns, specifically with water usage.
Later that month, the organizers started having meetings about how they're gonna fight back against this data center.
I thought it was interesting that Mayor Randy Nack just kind of showed up to one.
unannounced said he was just there to have a drink and relax and ended up talking for about 45 minutes about the data center.
And this week, those plans are officially on pause.
Marinak said he drafted a memo to the company, Balunist LLC, advising them that the city is no longer interested in pursuing the project.
And we did not know if, for me to see the reports, what exactly the data center, you know, who was going to use it or what its exact purpose was.
Is that still an open question?
Yeah, the original plans, when they annexed and rezoned the land, they noted that we're not sure that the data center is even going to go here.
The proposal was brought to us by this company, Balloonist LLC, and construction wouldn't start until at least 2027.
We'd do all the environmental assessments, all that.
And it's still residents were kind of pushing back on that idea, especially because of the water usage specifically.
It was 75,000 gallons of water a day on average.
Gotcha.
Okay.
Before we get to our next story, I do want to just remind folks one more time as we're coming up on eight o'clock here, you've got about three minutes to text us the word fall, F-A-L-L, as part of the go for the green and gold text to win contest.
Again, last call for fall, y'all, F-A-L-L before the end of the segment here with James Kelly.
who also covered another protest at Eau Claire City Hall, I believe having to do with their congressman.
Yeah, this was definitely one of the more interesting protests I've covered recently.
A lot of the talk around these comments that were made by two city council members have revolved around free speech.
That was mentioned at this protest, but I think the more interesting thing is that city council president Emily Berge and organizers were talking about how
even the threat of pulling federal funding from a city like Eau Claire, it doesn't punish the two individuals who made these comments.
And the same thing with Mayo Clinic, it doesn't punish the individuals who make these comments.
It punishes the people who use their services, who rely on the police department, fire department, schools.
It punishes, you know, all the residents of the city rather than just the people who did make those comments, whether or not you agree with
them.
Let's go up to the Apostle Islands next, and an issue that comes up every so often, and it's come up again.
The Apostle Islands is not a national park.
It's a national lakeshore.
There are national waterways, all kinds of other things.
The designation of a national park, I mean, to some people it sounds automatic, like, oh, why wouldn't you want that?
Well, there are reasons, and so those discussions around the Apostle Islands up north are kind of heating up once again.
Tell us more.
Yeah, so Congressman Tom Tiffany, who announced his run for governor earlier this week, said that he had reintroduced the Apostle Islands National Park Bill.
He had introduced it over the summer, but according to Bayfield's county officials hadn't really gotten too much community input on the matter, and they were concerned one about tribal rights, which in this updated bill notes that all of those tribal rights and treaties are maintained.
and the other concern was the increase in tourism.
While an increase in tourism is generally good, you need to have the space for increased tourism, and Bayfield County currently has an issue with just their own affordable housing stock on top of the tourism that they do have already from the Apostle Islands, they're still in a popular place to go.
So it's not like they don't have any tourism there, they just don't really have the capacity for more.
So we'll see if they've...
kind of addressed those issues together going forward.
Yeah, Tony's added on YouTube.
It's a horrible idea.
We don't have the capacity for more people.
Mayors there have said they don't want it.
He says, I think it's just a scheme by Tiffany to mine more land.
That's debatable.
But it is, you know, it also would lead, when you say popularity, that would include development.
And while you can't develop inside a national park, it would mean that on its periphery, there would be certainly an influx of activity as well.
And finally, just a few seconds here, Hayward has a forestry revitalization bill.
What's the short version of that?
The short version is it would convert woody mass, basically trees, to aviation fuel.
It would require at least 80% of the wood used to be sourced from Wisconsin up in Hayward, and it would convert 880 tons of wood residue into 48 million gallons of biofuel annually.
The lawmakers who proposed it said they've spoken to Governor Evers, but it's unknown if Governor Evers would actually sign the bill if it came to him.
Yeah, and I definitely want to learn more about this.
And so we're going to be looking into that in the coming days.
James Kelly from our Chippewa Falls newsroom.
Thank you so much, sir.
Have a great day.
Have a good one.
All right.
And we'll have Joseph Pecky and Sean O'Malley about your money in the markets all still ahead.
I'm Pat Critello.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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