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That's pretty good so far.
Now, from Nashville, the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Critello.
That was a little high there at the end, but that was nice.
Thank you, Parker Olson.
Appreciate that very much.
Yes, you do.
Good morning.
It is 706.
Nice to have you back here on this Friday morning, October 2nd.
Coming up, we will have Jonas Pizito and former US Attorney Jim Santel forming our week in review panel.
I'll have a few comments in a couple of minutes here about Derek Van Orden and what he has said this week that
further besmirches his service and the uniform that he once wore, but first let's check in.
In the mailbag here in the comment sections of Facebook and YouTube and from Rob, we've got Good Morning from Tigerton, partly cloudy and 56.
He's got five yards to mow in Tigerton.
He says much of Northern Wisconsin is now in a drought.
Tigerton hasn't had measurable rain
since September and with the falling leaves could increase the fire risk as well.
So a good little note of caution from Robin Tigerton.
From a weather standpoint, I mean it is it is definitely not Fall like yet temperature wise.
I mean we have temperatures that are going to be coming close to or setting records then a cold front is supposed to push in sometime around Sunday and we'll make things breezy and then we will start the next work week with much more fall like temperatures Of course, we've got updated forecasts for you throughout the day
On your civic media radio station tony nodding on youtube.
Yes, it hasn't rained in a while Which we hadn't really noticed because you know, it isn't like growing season anymore.
So folks don't think about it But yeah, it's starting to get a little dry out there.
Uh, let's see it is uh 708 That seems like as good a time as any to do our first round of the day for the go for the green and gold text to win contest
The green and gold would be cash and jewelry and I believe this might be the the final day of this so you better get some entries in entries plural There are seven chances to win throughout the course of the day You send us a text through the civic media app You look up a station you use text button and you send us a keyword before the end of the hour so before 8 o'clock this morning You've got to send in the keyword that I'm about to give you
Of all the day's entries in this multi-station, multi-state game, one lucky winner today will get $200 cash and a gold-plated chain, and then one really lucky winner gets the two-week contest grand prize.
That would be two club-level indoor seats to see Green Bay versus Minnesota.
A little football game in Green Bay on November 23rd plus a gas card to get you to the game.
I supposed to get home too.
Total value of the prize package is more than $1,500.
And so if you're ready, and I almost am, let's go find that keyword of the day for our text to win contest.
The word is love.
You know, like Jordan.
So again, the text word is love.
Text that in before eight o'clock this morning to be entered for our prize of the day and also for the big grand prize as we start to wrap up the Green and Gold Text to Win contest.
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All right, well, let's get to what...
Congressman Derek Van Orden has been doing once again to bring a little dishonor to service that we should be saluting.
And I say that as the proud son of a soldier.
And I have great admiration and gratitude toward anyone who serves in America's Armed Forces.
But here's the thing.
Service in and of itself is not a blank check.
There are duties of service that go beyond
what you do in a battlefield or in any other capacity.
Service is perpetual and that includes the things that you say and do when you are no longer wearing the uniform and especially the things you say and do when you run for and serve in elected office.
Now, I know there are people like Derek Van Orden who see elected office and politics as some kind of an easy punching bag and they treat their own service and office as some kind of a joke, like it's beneath them to be part of something that we all like to complain about.
But politics isn't something that's beneath you.
It's an essential part of a free and functioning democracy.
Another essential part of a functional and strong democracy
is a healthy respect for the men and women who serve in leadership roles in our military.
Now again, I'm not saying military leaders get a blank check.
They too can make mistakes.
Some of them can be not good people.
Some of them not good battle planners in retrospect.
But to trash military leadership as a group,
as you're about to hear from former Navy SEAL Derek Van Orden, does a disservice not just to the leadership, but to all the troops, sailors, Marines, airmen, and others all up and down the chain of command.
So listen to this latest outburst from Congressman Van Orden about military leadership on the Vicki McKenna Show reacting to what was said to them by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this week.
And me and my buddies spent over 20 years in sustained combat.
And we have been waiting for somebody
to tell these generals to do their damn jobs.
They turned the war in Afghanistan and Iraq into a vanity fair project.
They wanted to, they competed on how many people had their personal security details.
They competed on their quarters to make sure they had the fanciest things ever.
And they did things over and over again to get promoted.
So we were in Afghanistan for 20 years but we actually fought about 40 different wars because these general officers and flag officers came in and they had to do their own footprint to get promoted.
That's why we we lost those wars the general officers and flag officers turned it into a vanity project and is disgusting and I've never seen any any type of vitriol from the enlisted and Junior officers towards the general officers and flag officers in the GWAT and Pete Hegsett is roping them up hard
At the end there he says GWAT that's the acronym for global war on terror now set aside the whole
Pete Hagseth, Donald Trump debacle, if you can, because on its own, what happened this week was a national embarrassment.
And it damaged American prestige across the globe, no matter how much Derek Van Orden wants to cheer for it.
But let's set that aside and just focus on Van Orden's desire to play me too, me too, when it comes to talking down the generals.
Because again, he is an elected official.
Young men and women should be inspired.
by what he says about service.
Instead, he's whining, which is talking pretty big for someone who has 2020 hindsight about what took place in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's not some kind of a special gift to be able to criticize leaders after an outcome has been determined.
So all he's really managed to do is undermine the military.
His disdain for his own leaders brings comfort to enemies and it gives pause to young men and women who might now second guess whether to serve because of his whining.
It's also pretty big talk for someone who was to put it charitably insurrection adjacent on the US Capitol grounds on January 6th.
That's right Congressman.
We haven't forgotten that either.
Your role that day.
in deciding to fly to Washington on that January 6 day, by the way, using campaign funds to help rally for a cause that was rooted in a lie by a man who tried to overturn an American election and encouraged the armed insurrection that followed.
You willingly chose to take part in that.
Even if you never stepped foot inside the Capitol, even if you personally never attacked a single police officer on the grounds that day,
you chose to be there for reasons that were faulty and embarrassing to your own previous service.
The role that he played is only magnified as he takes elected office and also now attacks people using the very first amendment freedoms he allegedly promised to defend.
But now when teachers and doctors and people from all walks of life try to assert their first amendment freedom of expression,
People in office like Congressman Van Orden get them fired.
He simply lacks the emotional temperament to defend our country from enemies foreign and domestic when he sees political disagreements as domestic terrorism.
And when he sees his military commanders as political targets, it's not just that he's not worthy of the office.
He's not worthy of the uniform.
And again,
We have gratitude for his service at the time in the military, but his service in Congress has become too much of an embarrassment for his district, for the state, and frankly for the country.
It is 716 right now and turning to other and much lighter matters.
We now know who the Milwaukee Brewers are going to be playing in the National League Division Series after the Chicago Cubs defeated the San Diego Padres in the wild card round of the playoffs.
And so we now know as well the start times for at least the first couple of games Cubs versus Brewers at American Family Field.
And that includes we also know when the
pregame will be taking place for the Brewers 2.
And it is now a 108 first pitch on Saturday, Brewers vs. Cubs.
So 1235 is when the pregame will begin on Civic Media Stations in Richland Center, Oshkosh, Racine, Park Falls, and Hayward as well.
So again, that is for game one on a Saturday afternoon.
But then game two,
also an American family field is going to be later.
That's going to be a late start.
The first pitch will be at eight oh eight, which means the pregame will be about 735 Parker if I'm not mistaken.
And that's when again, we can we can do what what Parker wants in the series truly has become the story of the day.
It's it's not that it's not the Taylor Swift album.
It's it's not anything else.
It's Parker declaring that he wants to make the children of Chicago cry.
because of the way the Brewers are going to stomp on the Cubs in the National League division series.
You have no regrets about saying
Building character.
There is a lot of heartbreak involved, you know, and that's the thing we're taking on the Cubs with this series, it's going to be a case of, you know, highest highs, lowest lows.
If if we lose, it's, it's gonna stink, you know, and something that will always stick with us.
But if we can get to the National League Championship series by ramming it down Craig Council's throat and making everybody in Chicago a little more despondent, yeah.
I'm I'm here for it.
And I'm not just saying that because Chicago radio legend Joe Nesposito is waiting here when we say we want the children of Chicago in tears.
We'd be saying that anyway.
Yeah, but I'm
I'm betting Joan's going to want some equal time on this in just a couple of minutes.
But before we go along with the brewers playing tomorrow against the Cubs, we also have the Badgers playing in Ann Arbor against Michigan.
That's an 11am kickoff and the coverage will begin at nine o'clock tomorrow morning on Civic Media stations in Richland Center, Amory, Wisconsin Rapids and Ripon.
Once again, our go for the green and gold text to win contest.
Last day of it is going on right now.
And the word
hour is love.
So get on that civic media app, head over to any of the stations and use the text feature and text love L O V E before eight o'clock to be in the running for the daily prize and the grand prize to see a Green Bay
play Minnesota in Green Bay next month, create indoor seats for a nice little football game.
So still ahead the aforementioned Jonas Pizito and former US Attorney Jim Santel, Mark Jacob and Jennifer Scholesi are both off this week.
And Jim Santel, we're going to talk to him about the recent dismissal of a lawsuit filed by a walkie-shot teacher fired for a social media post.
Doesn't that sound familiar in this day and age?
I'm Pac Rightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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Well, let's see, you can sign up for our daily newsletter at UpNorth News by heading over to UpNorthNewsWI.com and Ellie Bordeaux put together today's issue, which also includes an introduction to a new weekly feature, a small business segment where she invites readers to send in photos of their favorite hometown small business.
to maybe give them a little shout out in Friday's editions of the newsletter, what makes them so special.
And again, for all that and all the other stories that she puts into every edition, head over to UpNorthNewsWI.com, click subscribe up there in the top banner.
You can also sign up for my Sunday morning newsletter with a focus on politics, where we have a question of the week as well.
And this week's question has been about the federal government shutdown and how is this going to end?
Is it going to end with Democrats blinking and caving and just leaving in place the massive cuts to health care that President Trump and congressional Republicans have put in or will congressional Republicans and or the president feel enough pressure to finally compromise rollback some of those health care cuts and Get the government back to work
In other words, just how much damage are they willing to inflict on Americans and on the economy before restoring some of the damage that they've already done to American budgets and the quality of American healthcare?
You can answer the question of the week by getting signed up for that newsletter Sunday mornings with Pat Krightlow over at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
There's also a new Civic Media newsletter that is most definitely worth your time.
It's called Civic Media Today, and it's on Substack.
Hit over to Civic Media Today.
.substack.com for more about that.
All right, we've got Mark Jacob off today, and Jennifer Scholes is a little under the weather today, but we do have former US Attorney Jim Santel here, and you can catch his show, Amicus, a Law Review, every Saturday live at 9 a.m.
on stations across the Civic Media radio network, and it is replayed on Sunday mornings as well.
And joining us from Chicago is Jonah Sposito, and you can hear her daily show live local and progressive on WCPT radio weekday afternoons from two to five.
You can find links to guests and past episodes and podcasts over at heartlandsignal.com.
Jonah Sposito and Jim Santel, join us now.
Jim, Joan, good morning to you both.
Good morning, Pat.
Good morning, Joan.
It is so nice to have you both here There's certainly a lot to cover in terms of headlines throughout the rest of this hour Joan we're gonna start with you and some of the Troubling headlines out of there with federal troops being sent by Donald Trump in a you know a show of intimidation a show of force I mean to the point of I mean overkill is putting it charitably to be using like helicopters to descend upon a neighborhood to
up people and then determine whether or not they are here as undocumented immigrants or not.
It's a state of siege, frankly, the way it looks from here.
What's the view from your post in Chicago?
It's harassment.
It is incredible harassment.
No neighborhood is safe.
I live on the North Shore of Chicago, you know, largely wealthier, whitish suburbs.
And ICE has been up here.
The New Trier Democrats have created a rapid response team.
They've got like 165 people up here who volunteered to move on a moment's notice when there are reports of ICE.
I mean, we didn't get any proof, any video or picture documentation.
But there were rumors that ICE was hitting some of the local parks.
The fear was that they were going to be grabbing nannies.
And if you do that, what do you do with the children?
It's just insane.
Just this morning, it was reported, though, in broad view, is where the detention facility is.
That's where ICE operates out of.
That's where they take people.
A lot of legislature, legislatures were going there to protest and ICE just ramped up the violence just incredibly to where now it's rubber bullets and tear gas, people who are, there was a Channel 2 CBS2 reporter who drove by in her own vehicle to see if there was any protest going on.
There wasn't.
She got back in her vehicle.
And somebody from that facility, we can only assume it was an agent, shot a pepper ball through her window into her face.
I mean, completely unprovoked.
The governor has said that a combination now of local police, state police, Cook County sheriffs are going to be dispatched to the facility to manage protests.
and manage aggressive responses from ICE.
Man, it's about time.
It's just unbelievable.
And really, Jim Santel, at this point, all you can really do is document it for what I'm sure will be years of legal proceedings that will follow for this type
Absolutely.
The lawsuits are underway.
We know that some members of the federal judiciary
Especially when it comes to what's happening in Los Angeles, certainly applicable to Chicago as well, other places, already finding under the law, under the Constitution, that what the president is doing with Kristi Noem, with Holman, others is illegal and unconstitutional.
Supreme Court starts its new term in about 72 hours from now.
Pat and Joan, as you well know,
it may well be that among the increasing docket there will be review of some of those legal decisions.
And ultimately, ultimately, some of the specific cases, the trials that could be had in the coming year or years, could percolate up.
Thai or federal courts, including the Supreme Court, will be fascinating once again to see if the Chief Justice and others decide that this too, this too, is among the muscular powers of this new presidency.
that we declared a year
and a half ago.
All right, Jim.
Thank you very much for that.
We're going to continue our conversation with former US Attorney Jim Santel and Joe Nesposito from Chicago on the other side.
But first, another reminder that our goal for the Green and Gold Text to Win contest is going on right now.
And the key word to send us before the end of the hour is love, L-O-V-E, text that using the Civic Media app.
And you can be eligible for our daily prize and for the grand prize.
It's football tickets.
the day versus the soda.
Dr. Kim Pirely is coming up at 8 o'clock along with Mike Clemens helping us preview the Brewer's versus the Cubs in the National League Division Series.
I'm Pat Breitlo.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Look at us collecting all this love over here, mostly because that's the key word for this hour, love, L-O-V-E, and the gold for the green and gold.
text to win contest.
But let me get over to my other screen here and thank some of the folks who've been texting in Jessica and cut a hay did.
Let's see, there's Rhonda in South Milwaukee, Jim in Brookfield.
Yep, you got it there.
But Jim in Germantown.
That was a misspelling just to give you a hint.
You might want to try again and put in love L O V E. Let's see.
And then we've got Meredith and Madison also got the keyword wrong.
She sends in on the text line.
Oh, I love Jim time.
Well, that's not the key word, but that is probably a commentary on Jim Santel.
So Jim, you have a fan out there as well.
The bar is now very high.
I'll try to live up to that expectation.
I don't doubt that you can do that all the way.
Former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel is here as well as Joan Esposito from WCPT Radio in Chicago.
Find what she's doing over at heartlandsignal.com.
Jim, let me start with you now on something with a tie to Wisconsin, a court case.
And I don't know if we're going to be all done hearing about it or if there's going
to be an appeal, but it's about a teacher in Waukesha who made a social media post about the song Rainbow Land, not being used.
The school district wouldn't allow it to be used.
She put up a post about it.
And now for the second time in a week, we're talking about a Wisconsin teacher losing their job because of a social media post.
This particular one filed a First Amendment lawsuit, which was recently dismissed.
What's your take on that?
Well, and this is once again, underscoring what we all are focusing on today is you just indicated First Amendment rights.
This is Melissa Temple, I should say to you and Joan and your listeners that I know Melissa well.
And although she was never a client of mine, I certainly have spoken to her about these kinds of issues and work with her in the community.
So why don't everybody know that upfront in terms of who she is and where she comes from?
Got it just right.
The big question here as I look at this is, got it again, Pat, accurately noting.
that she complained about the fact that the district was not allowing her first grade class to sing rainbow land.
So that's how we're talking about these issues today.
What happens is she does file this lawsuit, goes to a federal magistrate judge, her name is Nancy Joseph.
Interestingly, she is also the same magistrate judge who recently recommended to the district court the case against Hannah Dugan not be dismissed.
Here, here, the judge interestingly finds that Ms.
Temple, Melissa was in fact speaking
speaking as a private citizen at the time, and that she was speaking on a matter of public concern.
You might think, well, gee, private citizen public concern, shouldn't that mean that she's got the capacity to do it?
All kinds of cases out there.
There's an interesting case called Garcetti from 20 years ago having to do with these very issues and the restrictions on government employees there.
But here in the end, a magistrate judge says, you got to do some balancing, which is what typically judges do.
And she says that the interests of the
school board when it comes to things like receiving phone calls and some additional police presence that they decided to have at various locations, some emails and staff they're abiding about, some disharmony, as they said, among some staff members.
All of that, all of that, overcomes the right of the teacher to speak publicly.
And
I just don't know about that.
Joan, when it says that the teacher's tweet disrupted the district's operations so that its interest took precedence in the case.
And look, you can accuse me of going apples and oranges here, but if she couldn't put up a social media post about a song, what if this were 50, 60 years ago and she were putting up a post about desegregating the school?
Would we also say, well, that just disrupted the district's operations.
You've got to let them stay segregated.
And Joan, I know you
and I, you know, aren't former U.S.
attorneys, but on appearances, this just looks funny.
Jim, this is why people hate the courts.
They really do.
This whole, you know, both sizing.
That's essentially the, I mean, it's a first amendment right.
And even if she did disrupt what happened at the school board, maybe what's happening at the school board needs to be disrupted.
This is the kind of court ruling that makes me just want to tear out my hair.
This idea that somehow you can make everybody happy or, well, you're really right, but you're not all that right, or maybe there's some right in the other side.
kill me now it's just it's a matter of when it comes to social media posts which i get we're still in the relative infancy of of social media in terms of you know the the history of the entire constitutional republic here jim but marry that along with the ellsworth teacher who congressman derrick van orden you know helped to get ousted from a job for a social media post and i can't i don't want to believe that the recommendation here is that
teachers are some kind of a lesser employee and therefore should not have First Amendment rights on social media.
And I get if you accuse me of being oversimplistic.
Well,
we've got lesser employee, lesser human being is what that judge is saying.
Yeah.
I
We know that there's no right that is unqualified, is unconditional.
But we've always placed, as Joan was just indicating, the First Amendment, right?
We talk a lot about how even if this does have some disruption, the courts are playing.
You can say offensive things.
You can say things that are unpopular.
We exalt that.
We say that that's sort of the marketplace of ideas, even if you don't like them.
That's what the First Amendment is all about.
And here again, we've got a situation where the question, as you said, the outside pad is, you take this up on appeal, my concern, candidly, and I know that the lawyers are going to be talking about this, is you don't want the Court of Appeals to codify something here, maybe affirming the District Court charge.
it basically says, well, you know, if you've got a governmental entity, if you've got a school board, and the community doesn't like what the teacher said, then you can fire that person or impose some discipline.
That would be a very bad precedent at a higher court level that I'm concerned about as this goes forward.
Well, then Jim, can we get that Fox host fired who said that unhoused people should be euthanized?
How about that?
That was offensive to me.
that, right?
You
when when I appear on Joan's show occasionally down in Chicago there there's one subject that always seems to come while they're a few but Derek Van Orden the congressman comes up with increasing frequency I don't know if if Joan has me on all the time just to share the latest crazy thing that Ron Johnson said or now Derek Van Orden but earlier in this hour we played a clip from him on a radio show
just absolutely trashing the generals and all the other military leaders based on his own experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.
taking away anything from Derek Van Orden's First Amendment rights, even though he's going after other people's First Amendment rights.
However, Jim, you know, as somebody like yourself who served as well, I wondered how those comments set with you, not just the ones that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump made about military leaders, but a sitting member of Congress from Wisconsin and retired Navy SEAL saying the things that he said about America's military leadership.
I spent about two years or so as a civilian working with...
JAG attorneys who are spectacular, and yes, the colonels and the generals there, who are, again, regardless of what you may think about the war and all those issues, a lot of baggage there, these are tirelessly working people.
And the notion that somehow they are engaged in some sort of vanity projects there, I saw nothing of that.
And in fact, for what it's worth with respect to the convocation there at Quantico with the president and the secretary of defense,
call very well that when the generals and colonels were summoned back to Washington from Baghdad and from Kirk Cook and from Mosul other places with due respect they would never say this out loud they hated it why because again number one they could communicate much more easily even by civets across the planet but number two it removed them from their capacity
in the field to do the jobs that they were doing.
So many things about this, including Van Oren's comment, are not just actually wrong as a very, very provable matter, but also hugely offensive to me, who watched our military in that setting do nothing but protect the interests of not just Americans and our interests there, but also Iraqi populations, other members of our coalition forces there.
And Joan, I mean, what happened there this week was again, it was an embarrassment to hear what Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth had to say.
But I mean, we use this phrase all the time, but we now have the ultimate example of this meeting could have been an email.
What was
the discussion like for you and your listeners?
Well, I had retired former Major General Randy Manor on to talk about it.
And he...
You know, he reiterated over and over again that the military will not forget their obligation is to serve the Constitution and to serve the people.
And they're not political.
At one point, did you hear when Donald Trump was speaking to them?
He looked at them and he said, you know, you can applaud.
And Randy said, no, actually, I mean, these aren't just green recruits.
who are going to applaud every time Donald Trump looks at them, these are the brass.
They have military discipline.
They want to be.
They're supposed to be apolitical.
And you're absolutely right.
Randy pointed out, part of the reason why this in-person gathering was so expensive, he said, when you're at that level in the military, when you travel, you travel with AIDS, you travel with security.
Every person in that room basically showed up in Washington with an entourage.
It cost millions for that in-person meeting.
And of course, they have secure channels.
You know, Randy said that within one hour, with one hour's notice, this same crowd could have been gathered to hear the same message over secure channels.
I honestly,
Wonder coming out of all of this because of everything you just said Joan all the security all the travel arrangements and everything How much more was this an intelligence gathering operation for Vladimir Putin and others they got such a view of how American military Command and security works at a global level that they never would have received otherwise and Honestly, if if I Donald Trump does not have a filter
And if at some point he says about this, oh yeah, I got the idea.
Vladimir gave me that idea.
He thought it would be a good idea to get all the leadership together.
And he's just a useful enough puppet to be used in that way.
And I'm just, again, just embarrassed at what came of this and how we go forward from here.
I've only got about two minutes left here, so I just want to get some really quick answers on the shutdown before we go to break here.
Jim, we'll start with you again as a former U.S.
attorney.
What's the impact?
of government shutdowns when it comes to federal prosecutors having to do their work and continue to
Two very important points.
I dealt with this when I was U.S.
Attorney during the shutdown of the Obama administration.
Two things.
The notion that government is not affected by this and you're still getting your mail and your social security checks, that's a very good thing.
But it does have an impact upon inside the Department of Justice.
Attorneys doing their job representing you in the courts of America, civil cases, criminal cases.
We had to make hard decisions
about who goes home.
And at least for the immediate future, does not get paid.
And the second point, which I'll make very quickly Pat equally so, is these are civil servants.
They are not political people.
I was horrified.
People were crying in my office because we were sending them home.
They could not do their jobs, instructed not to do their jobs.
That would be in violation of the law.
People so committed to their jobs that they were firmly upset.
by what's going on.
And I look to the Congress, and once again I say, Apox on both your houses, get your act together.
Could you imagine being in a corporation, a nonprofit, and the board of directors being told, well, we just didn't get a budget put together in time, and so we're shutting down.
I recognize there's an awful lot of argument on both sides about this, the merits of what's going on.
But this is, frankly, once again upsetting to me as a former government official, and it compromises the integrity
of the government prevents people from doing what they should be doing on behalf of the people of the United States of America.
Congress, do your job.
Jim
Santel and Jonas Posito are here talking about the headlines of the week, and we thank them very much for being a part of our Friday.
And remember, in the eight o'clock hour, we'll have Dr. Kristen Lierly here and Mike Clemens talking a little sports with us as well.
I'm Pat Crightlow live from Nashville today.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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.
Here it is.
Last call for the go for the green and gold text to win contest.
You've got less than seven minutes now to text us the word love L O V E using the civic media app.
Text that in for your chance to win a daily prize of some green and some gold and a grand prize of some tickets to see Green Bay versus Minnesota play a little football.
Your next chance to win is during matinee on air during the nine AM hour and then plenty more chances to win throughout the course of the day.
Last day of the growth of the green and gold.
to win contest.
All right, we are joined one more time by WCPT radio in Chicago's Jonas Pizito and former US Attorney Jim Santel and before the break, Jim and Wade in on the government shutdown.
So, Joan, I want to turn to you as well.
You're in a city with, dare I say, thousands upon thousands of people who either work for the federal government
are connected in some way and harmed in some way
by a
shutdown that is so utterly unnecessary.
but sought by a president looking to attack government, it's got to be causing tremendous hardship in your hometown.
Well, it is.
And Donald Trump is using this shutdown as an excuse to do away with funds that were already allocated by Congress for us, for things like infrastructure.
But there is some good news this morning, the Wall Street Journal, which I hope
the Republicans on Capitol Hill are reading, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that behind the scenes, even though Republicans are standing strong, oh, the shutdowns, the Democrats' fault, you know, it's up to them, behind the scenes, they are saying, you know, maybe these affordable Care Act subsidies, maybe we could find a way to extend them, because even there, behind the scenes, acknowledging.
the devastation that will come to families and what really bothers them is that the insurance premiums going up, if indeed you can still get insurance, it's going to happen before the midterms.
So they're very worried, not about Medicaid or any of the other cuts they're making, but they're worried about these Affordable Care Act subsidies and the Wall Street Journal is reporting that they are talking behind the scenes about
Well, you know, maybe we could restore the subsidies, you know, because that's going to hit people's pocketbook before the midterm election.
A lot of this other stuff they've planned in the budget, they've timed it so that the real pain will hit after the midterm elections, but not this.
The ACA subsidies, man, that's going to go really fast.
But maybe there'll be some compromise.
you would hope so because I would think so because Jim I mean for so much longer than a decade now there've been all these ways to legally challenge the Affordable Care Act political challenges they've all failed and so this was another you know backdoor way to let the enhanced credits expire but again from a legal standpoint
This is something that, by the way, was a conservative idea to begin with the Affordable Care Act.
It's only once it got the Obamacare name on it that suddenly they were against it.
But I mean, look how much it has
Absolutely.
Heaven forbid that we should provide health insurance to Americans, right?
And so that's precisely right.
We know that the Supreme Court, again, just in the last term with respect to these task forces that were making determinations about whether or not preventive care should be covered under the Affordable Care Act.
So even the Supreme Court said, yes, those task forces are OK.
Once again, the Affordable Care Act affirmed by the Supreme Court just in this last term.
need to get the message that this is here to stay and the concept is one again that people in America overwhelmingly support.
It is once again outrageous to me as a former
a public employee, a former government employee that on an issue like this, on any issue.
Again, why are we debating this in the 13th hour?
That's my number one outrage.
But number two, on an issue like this, this is not a reasonable people differing issue.
We're talking about health care for human beings, and we need to get a budget to accomplish what is right for everybody.
in not just with respect to health care, but also the future and the integrity of the government operations across the board.
It is just amazing to note the things that the MAGA movement is going after.
Going after people having affordable health care and going after the notion of public service.
Not only attacking teachers like we talked about earlier, but Trump's saying that he basically wants to close down these what he called Democrat agencies.
In other words, he equates the notion of public service
as a democratic thing.
Remember it was Ron Johnson, uh, Joan, who said, I'd be happy if we never passed another bill again because, you know, that's, it just only creates services and things.
They're just so against the whole notion of public service.
And Joan, you and I both know there are Republicans as well who serve in the federal government because they understand the notion of service.
That is not a partisan thing.
But you're only going to hear them talk about that.
away from the cameras and away from the microphones behind closed doors because I, you know, I talk to members of Congress on my show all the time and they tell me they're Republican colleagues, you know, bluff and bluster and then behind the scenes, it's a whole different thing.
They know the reality of what they're doing.
And by the way, the nervousness about the ACA, the number of people using the Affordable Care Act for their insurance, it has doubled.
Estimates are now that it's 24 million people in this country rely on the Affordable Care Act for their insurance, 24 million.
And you're going to tick off 24 million people by, oh, by the way, your premium, yeah, it's going to double every month.
You know, we're really sorry about that, but you know.
And how dare you quote Ron Johnson this early in the morning?
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
It's just so rich coming from people, you know, members of Congress primarily who have their health care paid for by the taxpayers.
Jim, if you can do it in under 30 seconds, this notion of public service not being a partisan matter.
Again, 30 years of my service in Pirates Department of Justice, not affected by a White House, never considered issues related to what are the facts, what are the law, and that extends to every agency out there as well.
People are there as civil servants to do the work of government.
I am crestfallen that today we've got some of those good public servants who are at home and not doing the jobs that they want to do and they've been assigned to do.
You can hear amicus tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock across the Civic Media Radio Network.
Oh, look, we ran out of time for Joan to talk about the Cubs.
I don't know how that happened.
But Joan Esposito, you are a godsend.
Thank you for pinch hitting today.
And Jim Santel, thank you for being here as well.
Always a pleasure, Pat.
Hey, time.
Good to see you both.
Much more coming up after the 8 o'clock news here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I, Pat Kreitman.
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